The National Universities Commission, the Nigerian equivalent of Ghana’s National Accreditation Board, doesn’t joke with what many Nigerians call the degree mills. Their Executive Secretary is the revered Professor Julius Okojie, a fine academic who is respected by the Nigerian intelligentsia and also well received by anybody with a potential to pursue formal tertiary learning in Nigeria. By 2009, the NUC had closed down some 36 ‘illegal’ universities that fell below the national minimum standard. Some affected institutions were the Cool Atlantic University, the Sunday Adokpela University, Pebbles University among many others. Where the NUC was charitable, it moved quickly to suspend the operating licenses of institutions whose accreditation was in question. In recent times, the very popular Madonna University established by an equally respected Roman Father Edeh, has had a few problems with the NUC, which has also threatened to revoke the accreditation of institutions which have no governing councils. The people of the Niger area (Nigerians) are keen on maintaining the highest standards in education, and it seems to sit well with the conscience of collective Nigeria.

“Without a gentle contempt for education, no man’s education is complete,” Englishman G. K. Chesterton long established. If our universities would ever make the first 100 in global rankings, every new university should be made to go through the eye of the accreditation needle before they paint their buildings any colour they choose. Like their Nigerian counterpart, Ghana’s National Accreditation Board has taken this responsibility even more seriously. Their Executive secretary, Kwame Dattey, seems to have done a great job in getting the public to appreciate the fierce urgency of the accreditation mandate of his outfit. Today, it may be necessary for a student contemplating tertiary education, especially in a private university, to follow NAB’s accreditation protocols with the same interest as the institution seeking the clearance of the accreditation body. And NAB makes it easy by listing all accredited and unaccredited institutions on its website. At the last count, some 40 private institutions are listed as unaccredited by NAB.

Chesterton proves more useful here, too: “No man who worships education has got the best of education”. NAB has nabbed a few institutions in the past, including the Mankessim-based University of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Nab also nabbed Ideas University in Frapre, Brong Ahafo, for failing to meet its quality control standards. It is reported some Ideas students fought for their right to education at the Sunyani courts, whereupon a judge ruled in favour of Ideas, ordering NAB to reinstate the university’s accreditation. It had been a protracted situation between NAB and Ideas before the ruling. It appears NAB still has issues with Ideas. Did NAB nab Ideas at the wrong time? Does the revocation of accreditation necessarily mean a denial of the right to education?

When is a gentle contempt too much? Maybe it serves us right that the Time Magazine calls Chesterton the prince of paradox. We risk making a veritable paradox of tertiary education if we don’t handle things well. Do we have too many universities in Ghana? Nigerians joke that private universities have become good business because it is strategic to own one when you have two different buildings in the same compound. Get contractors to build a walkway from one building to another, mount a wall around it and slap an academic-sounding name on it. A new university is born. Accreditation is another issue, but entrepreneurs have learnt to take and live with risk. There should be a way out.

This is the situation NAB wants to avoid. Ghanaian education is quality, a Namibian-Canadian who had the privilege of tasting our brand confesses everyday. Presently, it is a fad for Nigerians to cross over to Ghana for education purposes, a fact their newspapers have come to accept. They come for a reason: they have 40 federal universities, 38 state tertiary institutions and 51 private ones. Well, for a population of about 170 Million, that really shouldn’t be enough, but the allure Ghanaian education provides for Nigerians is so irresistible that they are prepared to pay good Obama dollars for Legon’s Oxford quality. And so, perhaps, we would forgive their Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for wishing that Komla Dumor was Nigerian. She had referred to him as “Kola.” When Komla corrected her that he was Ghanaian, the former World Bank top economist remarked: “And you are so confident.” Oughtn’t he be? Well, Nigerians are confident.

Quality is the essence of the whole accreditation business. A buffoon will be a buffoon whether he goes to school or not. But if you must play the game by all means, why don’t you play it to win? In the midst of our deprivation and poverty (Yale’s purse is bigger than the GDP of Sierra Leone) we have a responsibility to make our universities world class. For, the world will not wait for us to catch up with Harvard while our businessmen seek to put a negotiable price on tertiary education, by fighting our quality control standards. Good infrastructure and affiliation to great universities alone do not make a good university; we want to build institutions that would produce a cheetah generation of thinkers and better doers than us. That would require some ultra vigilance and sometimes some heavy-handedness–on the part of NAB–to ensure that the right thing is done.

To help NAB succeed in its education quality control management, parents and students should be also vigilant in their choice of a university. It is not smart for any student contemplating a career in accountancy to sign his name at the now disaccredited Blacksmith University in Nigeria. University may mean unity in diversity but it should be worrying for a blacksmith to chip out an accountant from metal plates. We cannot blame those vulnerable students who rushed to the Cool Atlantic University in Nigeria. It is quite hot in that region; a little cooling off will do. However, those Ghanaians who settled for the makeshift tents at the Jedu campus of the University College of Jesus of Nazareth in Mankessim, should have themselves to blame for trying to alter biblical history. If the nearly 300 students could easily forget the birth place of Jesus, how could they ever retain anything they were taught? So NAB closed it down.

By all means, we would build new universities to satisfy the national appetite for education, as if it has suddenly become a marriage requirement for everybody to have a degree in Ghana. We don’t have the luxury Canadians have, to start talking of slashing down or at least not adding to the number of universities in the country. As we hasten to add to the numbers, we should also be in an even greater haste to add to the quality we have in Ghana at the moment. Where we are not satisfied, we should be prepared to negotiate the natural rights of vulnerable students to education. If that means closing down some universities, it is a better cure for the sick than a grand funeral in the end.

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin is a journalist. He lives in Ottawa, Canada

bigfrontiers@gmail.com