Only 8 federal varsities have counselling centres

A university teacher, Adeyemi Idowu, has said that only eight of the 40 federal universities have fully equipped and functional counselling centres.

Idowu, a professor of education at the University of Ilorin, who said he conducted a research on the state of counselling facilities in the nation’s universities this year, added that only four of the 50 private universities had fully equipped Counselling and Human Development Centres.

According to him, of the 38 state universities he surveyed, only eight representing 21 per cent of the universities have counselling centres.

He spoke on Friday while delivering the 145th UNILORIN’s inaugural lecture entitled, ‘Raising the bar: the counsellors’ mandate.’

Idowu, who urged the National Universities Commission to deny full accreditation to defaulting universities, noted that their action ran contrary to the directive on the establishment of CHDC.

According to him, many of the nation’s public and private universities have yet to comply with the directive.

He said, “The Federal Government had once issued an order to all universities to set up independent counselling centres on campuses. According to the order, the practice of providing counselling centres through the education faculty should stop as they were not being given their required place in the university system.

“The Executive Secretary of the NUC, Prof. Julius Okojie, said the documents were produced to ensure that universities provide the psychological, behavioural and other learning support services for students.

“As of January 2014, only eight of 40 federal universities have fully equipped and functional counselling centres. Another survey report shows that many state universities are without CHDC. Of the 38 state universities, only eight have counselling centres.

“The situation is even worse in private universities. Out of the 50 private universities surveyed as at January 2014, only four have fully equipped CHDC. The story is not different in other tertiary institutions; Colleges of Education and Polytechnics,” Idowu said.

The professor urged federal and state governments to take concrete steps to boost the training of counsellors in the universities.

He also urged the federal and state ministries of education to allocate a part of their annual budgets to the implementation of counselling services.