Lagos — The National Universities Commission (NUC) has rejected a $102 million World Bank loan. The loan offered by the World Bank in 2001 was to finance a scheme initiated by the bank to help Nigerian universities acquire modern information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure among other materials.

On the face of it, the loan and the initiative look good and noble. For sure, Nigerian universities are bereft of modern ICT equipment that would help the thousands of graduates churned out by these universities to be competitive in an increasingly technology driven world.

But the loan was offered with stringent and unacceptable conditionality. One of the terms of the loan was that 95 per cent of the $102million, which is $96.9million, would be used to pay for consultancy services to be provided by World Bank while a paltry five per cent, $5.1 million, would be deployed to acquire infrastructure.

The out-going executive secretary of the NUC, Professor Peter Okebukola, said it was on this ground that the NUC rejected the loan because it smelt like a "Greek gift".

We commend the moral courage of the NUC for rejecting the loan. We do not know the type of consultancy the World Bank intended to offer. But we find neither sense nor logic in the NUC paying 95 per cent of a loan to the same agency offering the loan as consultancy fees. It amounts to robbing the poor to further enrich the rich.

Are there no Nigerian agencies that could offer these consultancy services at much lower rate? Even if there is none, what is the rationale in spending a whopping 95 per cent of a loan on consultancy and only a mere 5 per cent on the actual infrastructure especially in a sector like ICT? These are germane moral and technical questions which the World Bank failed to answer in its proposal. And these, therefore, render the proposal flawed and the intent of the global bank suspect.

We stand by the NUC in saying no to such loan not because Nigerian universities do not have need of a lifeline but largely on account of our unpleasant experience with loans from such institutions.

We recall the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan which the regime of former military president, Ibrahim Babangida, took in the wake of the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). That loan, laden with crippling conditionalities, impacted grave pain than gain on our economy.

We recall, also, the cocktail of loans from the Paris Club of creditor nations taken by past regimes at both federal and state governments. It took the tenacity and ceaseless negotiations of former Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and President Olusegun Obasanjo for Nigeria to be granted debt forbearance and subsequent exit from the stranglehold of the Paris Club. But this happened only after Nigeria had paid princely $12.1 billion to her creditor.

There is nothing wrong in taking a loan in so far as such loan is judiciously applied. The inquest conducted by the Obasanjo government on past loans showed that most of them were frivolously frittered sometimes on purely hedonistic adventures.

We have no evidence that the NUC would have squandered the loan but the fact that it was offered with hugely unfair caveat to the disadvantage of the recipient(the NUC and by extension Nigeria) makes the loan as good as the IMF loan that took Nigerians through the thorny path of austerity measures. We don't wish for such any more, not even for our universities.

We concur that our universities are in a shambles especially in the area of infrastructure including ICT. But we also know that Nigeria can comfortably afford $102 million out of her healthy foreign reserves now standing at $34 billion. We see no logic in stacking-up huge external reserves that enrich the economies of the industralised nations while our local economy is in a mess.

We urge the Federal Government to muster the will to develop education. The N102 million needed to update our universities in ICT should be drawn from the external reserves. This is one way this government can demonstrate its commitment to the upliftment of the standard of education.

While we commend the Okebukola-led NUC for rejecting the loan, we caution that on no account should the NUC after Okebukola's tenure in office on August 3, 2006, should accept the loan with the same conditionality. We don't need such loans to fund education. Let's do the right thing: fund education from the idle funds in our foreign reserves.