The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, has read the riot act to Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian public universities, charging them to urgently diversify their institutions’ funding sources, strengthen their Advancement Offices and take full advantage of the enormous opportunities provided by the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to mobilise resources beyond government allocations.
Alausa gave the charge at the National Advancement Forum 2026, where he disclosed that only four out of 68 federal universities were currently making meaningful use of alternative funding opportunities, including research grants, endowments, alumni giving, philanthropy and industry partnerships. He described the situation as unacceptable and urged Vice-Chancellors to make resource mobilisation a core responsibility of university leadership.
“Government funding is not enough. Universities live, function and excel on blended funding,” the Minister said, stressing that Vice-Chancellors must move beyond managing allocated funds to actively building relationships capable of attracting additional resources for institutional development.
He noted that in advanced university systems, Vice-Chancellors do not simply sit in their offices to administer allocated funds but actively network with prominent individuals, alumni, businesses, philanthropists and research funders to secure resources for their institutions.
Dr. Alausa urged Nigerian university leaders to adopt this approach and leverage their institutions’ intellectual capital to attract funding for laboratories, scholarships, research chairs, innovation programmes and other strategic priorities.
The Minister stressed that the call for greater resource mobilisation was not a withdrawal of government support, noting that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration had demonstrated strong commitment to education through significant budgetary allocations, tertiary infrastructure investment and other interventions.
He explained that the Federal Government currently funds personnel costs in full, while universities retain 75 per cent of their internally generated revenue and continue to benefit from direct and special interventions by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund.
These, he said, provide a strong foundation which universities must complement with diversified, sustainable and resilient funding sources.
To strengthen institutional resource mobilisation, Dr. Alausa directed all university Advancement Offices to report directly to the Office of the Vice-Chancellor rather than the Registrar, directing Vice-Chancellors at the forum to communicate the directive to their respective institutions immediately.
He further directed that Directors of Advancement should have a minimum internal tenure of five years, renewable where appropriate, to enable them to build lasting relationships with donors, alumni, industry and other funding partners.
“Advancement Office operation is a professional job,” he said, describing advancement officers as professional fundraisers who require institutional support, stability and the confidence of university management to deliver results.
The Minister also urged universities to take alumni engagement more seriously by developing functional databases and deploying appropriate technology to maintain lifelong relationships with graduates in Nigeria and across the world.
He said effective alumni systems were essential to identifying, engaging and mobilising graduates as long-term institutional partners, adding that alumni engagement should be treated as a strategic component of institutional advancement rather than an occasional activity.
Dr. Alausa recalled that before the present administration, some research and endowment funds had been moved into the Treasury Single Account, TSA, creating challenges around access and affecting confidence in the management and utilisation of such funds.
He said President Tinubu subsequently directed the development of a framework allowing research and endowment accounts to be moved out of the TSA to commercial banks of choice, thereby creating greater flexibility and confidence in the management of such resources.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has met you beyond halfway. He has given you the leverage and the opportunity to do your jobs well. You must now take advantage of it,” the Minister told the Vice-Chancellors, expressing disappointment that many institutions had yet to fully exploit the opportunities created by the administration.
He challenged university leaders to sit up and take advantage of the policy environment and opportunities now available to them, stressing that institutions that fail to diversify their funding base risk limiting their capacity for sustained growth, research and academic excellence.
Dr. Alausa said the Ministry of Education, working with the Nigerian Higher Education Foundation, NHF, would move beyond training and capacity building to develop a comprehensive national framework for sustainable financing of tertiary institutions.
The framework, he explained, would cover endowment governance, accountability, research grants, Advancement Office structures, alumni giving, industry partnerships, philanthropy incentives, revenue management and transparency.
He added that all public universities would be progressively onboarded into the framework, with each institution expected to build an endowment, establish an effective advancement structure, maintain a functional alumni database, strengthen research funding capacity and develop productive relationships with industry, philanthropists and other strategic partners.
The Minister emphasised that accountability and transparency must remain central to university advancement, stressing that donors, alumni, businesses and research funders would only sustain their support for institutions they can trust.
He clarified that the objective was not to replace government funding or depend solely on internally generated revenue, but to establish diversified and resilient financing systems that complement government support and sustain academic excellence over the long term.
Dr. Alausa assured that the Federal Ministry of Education would continue to provide the policy direction and enabling environment for stronger university financing, while expecting university leaders to take greater responsibility for mobilising resources.
He said the ultimate goal was to build Nigerian universities capable of attracting competitive research funding, engaging their alumni, developing productive industry partnerships and mobilising philanthropic support to sustain academic excellence for generations.
