More than anything else, the latest global ranking of universities has further underscored the need to accord topmost priority to Nigerian universities specifically and the education sector in general. According to the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2025, which was recently released and featured over 1,500 universities across 105 higher education systems, no Nigerian university made the top 1,000. This is worrisome.
QS is a leading higher education analytics firm that
publishes the annual world university rankings, evaluating institutions based
on academic excellence, reputation, and global diversity.
The United States leads with 197 institutions featured in
the rankings, followed by the United Kingdom with 90 and mainland China with
71.
Nigeria is represented by two universities in the rankings,
with the University of Ibadan and the University of Lagos both placing between
1,100 and 1,200.
This says a lot about the deplorable state of education in
Nigeria. Despite its strategic importance in driving the current
knowledge-based economy, successive administrations in Nigeria have relegated
education to the background by earmarking paltry budgetary allocation to the
sector.
A review of the budgetary allocation to this all-important
sector by the 36 states of the federation, all of which own at least one
university each, showed appalling statistics. The education sector has been
deprived of adequate funding with a dearth of infrastructure, poor welfare, and
inadequate staffing being part of the challenges impeding the sector and
hampering effective learning across primary, secondary, and tertiary
institutions.
For most experts in the sector, that Nigerian universities
ranked so low should not have come as a surprise. Consistently, teaching and
research are often interrupted by prolonged Academic Staff Union of
Universities strikes.
An ASUU strike coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
In 2022, public universities across the country were shut down for close to
eight months.
These recurring strikes by the university lecturers are not
unjustified because the infrastructure in most public sector-owned universities
is in a deplorable state.
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund is making some modest
interventions but clearly, it is not enough to effectively tackle the rot in
the system.
Since 2009, the Federal Government has not serviced a
memorandum of understanding it signed with ASUU on the revitalisation of the
institutions and the enhancement of lecturers’ remuneration. In the MoU, the
Federal Government agreed to release N220 billion per year but has not done so.
This has forced ASUU to protest on different occasions.
In that period, the Federal Government established a slew of
public universities that it may not be able to fund properly. Some of them are
specialised universities for the three arms of the military, police, and
transportation. The National Universities Commission says there are 274
universities in Nigeria as of May, made up of 149 private institutions,
comprising federal (62), state (63) and private (149).
The impact of the long years of neglect and lip service
accorded the education sector is visible for all to see. The quality of
graduates churned out annually by these universities leaves much to be desired.
Some of them are unemployable because of poor training. The right word, as has
often been used unchallenged, is that a lot of graduates are half-baked.
The Federal Government should see the latest rankings as a
wake-up call to salvage what is left of the system. Apart from the Student Loan
initiative, the government at all levels should give grants, scholarships, and
bursaries to undergraduates.