The proprietor of Novena University advocates for more private schools in Nigeria

Dr. Chuks Ochonogor in an interview with the Authority at Ogume in Delta State, called for the creation of more private universities in Nigeria. Ochonogor, who is the proprietor of Novena University Ogume, sighted the desperate situation of limited vacancy for admission into the various national universities.

He is of the option that 85% of the people seeking admission in Nigeria have no placement as the current public universities hence the need for private universities to bridge the gap created by the insufficiency of public universities.

Although he didn’t talk about the cost of acquiring education from private school (and the students ability to pay the tuition fees and other cost). Neither did he mention about the quality of the knowledge being acquired. The school fees of the cheapest private university is 10 time that of a government university and despite the fact that most public school lacks adequate infrastructures, their facilities are incomparably better than the average private university (since the public school has government and NGO funding).

He said, “The coming of private universities is to create opportunities for those who need university education so that they can have basic tools to have life sustenance, so that they can have opportunities for themselves to have a career, to learn, to develop skills and contribute to the development of society.

“I am not saying that the public universities have not done enough, what I am saying is that even as it is today, statistically, Nigeria does not have enough institutions to cater for the number of youths who desire university education in the country,”

“What is the population of Nigeria compared to the 141 universities that we have? In Japan, how many universities do they have? In China, how many universities do they have? In the United Kingdom, how many universities do they have? What is their population?

“Being a university graduate does not mean you must go to the federal or state civil service for job. University education is to widen your spectrum of knowledge and not necessarily an avenue to seek for civil service job,”

He did recognised that Nigeria has made significant progress in terms of the number of universities because, the country only had four universities after its independence and over a hundred today. However, he insisted that the establishment of more school would meet the yearning of the growing population and would compliment the government establishments. Novena University is the first private university in Delta state.