Nigeria loses as much as $2 billion (N400 billion) as capital flight to education tourism abroad annually.
This was disclosed by Senator Binta Masi Garba (APC – Adamawa North), the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institution and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), in Abuja at the official commissioning of Federal University of Lafia (FUL), Nasarawa State, to the Nigeria Reseach and Education Network (NgREN).
The senator frowned on the practice by some Nigerians of travelling to other African nations, some of them not as developed as Nigeria, for tertiary education.
While stating that the country was gradually repositioning its tertiary education system through the initiative of the research and education network, she vowed to use her position as chairman of the committee to persuade her colleagues in the Upper Chamber to support other initiatives geared towards restoring Nigeria’s education sector to its pride of place.
She also said her decision to expose NgREN to her colleagues is meant to secure adequate funding for it to enable the maximum delivery of its mandate.
The Coordinator of NgREN, Dr. Joshua Attah, while speaking on the benefit of the programme, said it had been able to cut connection cost, which is now fixed at $59 per megabite.
“It helps to avoid unnecessary travels and also help cut cost of capacity building as teaching can be delivered to several people,” he said.
Launched on July 8, 2014, NgREN’s mandate is to harmonise knowledge within the tertiary sector to drive productive research, collaboration and knowledge dissemination for the development of Nigeria and Mankind.
It is presently providing services to 27 federal universities in the country.