International Journal of Social Research and Development

authors
Sanusi Abdul Wasiu, Rukayya Attahiru Shamsuddeen

abstract
Education has for long been recognized as a panacea for nations’ ills. This is especially true of higher education. A good higher education system is required for the overall prosperity of a nation and the quality of output (graduates) is a function of infrastructure that determines the students' academic performance and their motivation to learn. Therefore, infrastructure is among the important operational inputs into any instructional programme. It constitutes elements that are necessary for teaching and learning; and is vital in the development of qualitative tertiary education. Generally, it is a basic assumption that tertiary institutions are, by definition and long-established tradition, meant to be places where all learning activities are governed by creative skepticism, constant questioning, disputations and argumentation. The National Policy on Education (2004) relates the relevance of tertiary institutions to: contributing to national development through training high level manpower; developing and inculcating proper values for the survival of the individual and society; among others. Therefore, if quality is to be ensured in the nation’s tertiary institutions, the infrastructural base of the system needs to be improved upon. However, in Nigeria, tremendous growth in the higher education sector has made the administration of higher education institutions complex. Overshooting the carrying capacity of most Nigerian tertiary institutions is foiling the realization of these objectives. It is no longer news that the Nigerian educational system, due to an unwholesome combination of neglect and mismanagement, has fallen over the years into a squalid state of disrepair. An average public tertiary institution in Nigeria lacks basic infrastructure like regular water supply, electricity, accommodation and well-equipped libraries. In most instances, the toilets that serve the students are in bad shape, as many do not have running water and the situation is the same in most of the tertiary institutions across Nigeria. It is based on this backbone; the paper was designed to assess the state of infrastructural facilities in Nigeria tertiary institutions as well as students’ academic performance. The study adopted the ex-post-facto research design and secondary source of data collection was adopted. Data were collated from various sources including; National Bureau of Statistics (NBS); government gazettes, policy document, bulletin, magazines, journals, newspapers, articles, and relevant textbooks, materials from internet, term papers, and archival documents on the subject area while content analysis was used in analyzing the data. The paper was divided into five segments including the introductory part. Part two is the review of related literature and segment three dwelled on the state of infrastructure in Nigeria tertiary institutions. Segment four dissected on the state of infrastructure in Nigeria tertiary institutions and students’ academic performance and part five, the final section dealt with conclusion and suggestions.