Folashade Adebayo
With limited government funding spent on recurrent expenditure, a former Minister of Health, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, has urged universities to seek complementary funding sources to advance research and aid development.
He said that such alternate funding from private sources, such as philanthropy and charities, should be properly structured as a private-public partnership in order to be sustainable.
Adelusi-Adeluyi said this on Tuesday as the guest speaker during the first Ladipo Mobolaji Abisogun-Afodu annual lecture in Pharmacy at the University of Lagos.
The lecture, titled, Private Public Partnership as a vehicle for Sustainable Pharmaceutical Education, was organised as part of a N36m endowment fund by the first Nigerian female graduate of Law to attend a university, the late Mrs. Frederica Omololu-Mulele.
Adelusi-Adeluyi said, “My research in preparing this paper showed that 80 per cent of universities’ budgetary allocations go to recurrent cost including such overheads as staff salaries, electricity, security, building maintenance and others. Less than 10 per cent is spent on research. In the circumstances, it is easy to see that a career in pharmaceutical or scientific research is not likely to be paramount to many. The challenge is for society to create an environment that facilitates new knowledge creation through research with requisite governmental and societal support.’’
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