Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State has been ranked the best university in Nigeria by the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings.

The 12-year-old private ivory tower, which emerged best ahead of public university, was also ranked one of the best 400 universities in the world.

According to the rankings, the top three universities are ABUAD; Covenant University and University of Ibadan.

A statement in Ado-Ekiti on Sunday by ABUAD’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Mr. Tunde Olofintila, said the University management received the good news on the website of The Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

This, he said, was later followed by a letter dated April 27, 2022 and titled “2022 THE Impact Rankings” by the former NUC Executive Secretary, Prof. Peter Okebukola.

ABUAD management said that the latest ranking would fast track the vision of the the founder of seeing ABUAD becoming one of the best 100 universities in the world in no distant time.

The global ranking for ABUAD is coming 10 months after the Alper-Dodger Scientific Index ranked the institution as the “Best Research University” among the 99 private universities in Nigeria and No. 10 out of 197 public and private universities in Nigeria in July 2021.

The statement reads: “This year’s ranking analysed more than 108 million citations across over 14.4 million research publications and included survey responses from almost 22,000 scholars globally. Overall, we collected over 430,000 data points from more than 2,100 institutions that submitted data.”

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, according to the statement, is a respected worldwide by students, teachers, governments and industry experts, focuses on “helping the world’s universities to achieve excellence” by looking at performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four key areas of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

“The International Ranking Body is also the definitive source of data, insight and expertise on higher education worldwide while its business is built on 10 million data points from 2,500 institutions in 93 countries, on unrivalled news, insight and intelligence; and on a relationship of trust with universities spanning 50 years.

“The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 included more than 1,600 universities across 99 countries and territories, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date.

In his letter to Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Okebukola said: “The 2022 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings (measured against the SDGs) were released today.

“Our (NUC) Executive Secretary, H.A.E. Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, min, MFR, FNAL, HLF, congratulates the universities and entreats that we should strive to get many more Nigerian universities in the top 200 in the next few years.

“By our strategic plan 2022-2030, the Nigeria Universities Ranking Advisory Committee (NURAC) will work with all universities in the system to ensure that we are no pushover on the global league tables from 2023”.

The acting Vice-Chancellor of ABUAD, Prof. Smaranda Olarinde, who received attributed the uncommon feat to the untiring cooperation which the University has consistently received from all stakeholders.