Why Nigerian Universities Are Ranked Low

By Reuben Buhari

For Nigeria, a country with the 26th biggest
economy in the world and the largest in
Africa, why should only one Nigerian
university appear at a dismal eight position
out of the top 10 universities in Africa?
Journal Consortium, which released its
ranking for the year 2015, placed university
of Ibadan at eight positions while six South
African Universities made the top 10. The
second Nigerian University, University of
Nigeria managed to make the 13th position.
Embarrassing as that is to the country’s 170
million populations, it is worse when
Nigerian universities are assessed with their
counterparts in developed countries,
because no single African university even
appeared within the top 100 universities in
the world. No Nigerian university even
appear within the top 500.
In another assessment by 4icu.org
University Web Ranking, which released its
own 2015 raking of top 100 universities in
Africa, no Nigerian university made even the
top 10 despite having about 148 universities
and close to 106 polytechnics and colleges
of education spread all over the country.
This means that our country’s quality of
education has not improved in proportion to
the increasing number of tertiary institutions
springing up.
The fact that Universities from South Africa,
Egypt, Morocco and Kenya were all ahead of
all Nigerian universities is a poignant
testimony that our educational status has
really dipped, but more telling is the fact that
very small countries, in terms of population,
resources and advancement are also ahead
of several Nigerians university in the overall
100 ranking.
Future rankings will definitely not be helped
by the N400 billion that the federal
government has budget for education in its
2015 budget. This amount is way below the
United Nation’s recommendation of 26 per
cent of a country’s budget. The sad fact
with the budgetary provision is that most of
it will go toward servicing overheads rather
researches and other endeavours that
makes a tertiary institution to stand out.
The dismal ranking our country’s
universities have been having hasn’t been
helped either by the huge number of bright
Nigerian students that flocked outside the
country for their educational pursuits.
The Consular Chief of the United States
Embassy in Nigeria, Stacie Hankins said
some months ago that there are currently
7000 Nigerian students studying in the US.
In Great Britain, there are about 35,000
Nigerian students, while thousands more
students are studying in different countries
of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the
Middle East. Its so huge that the
international Nigerian student market in the
UK is worth $17 billion dollars, making
Nigeria the 3rd largest country after China
and India that’s sending a large number of
its students to the UK.
The U.S. Embassy Educational Advising
Center also noted that Nigeria sends more
students to the United States than any other
country in sub-Saharan Africa and that
Nigeria has students studying at over 733
institutions in all the 50 states of the United
States and the District of Columbia.
Already, a forecasts compiled by the British
Council says that Nigeria will soon overtake
India to become the UK’s second biggest
source of international postgraduate
students. It’s so pervasive that there are
Nigerians paying hard-earned money to
study in Uganda, Chad, Sudan, Ghana
Burkina Faso and Kenya among other
countries.
Ghana, Nigeria’s neighbor has been
receiving a larger number of Nigerians
desirous of quality education. Currently,
there are about 75,000 Nigerians studying
there.
In June 3, 2014, while delivering a public
lecture, the former governor of the central
bank and present Emir of Kano, Dr Sanusi
Lamido revealed that data have shown that
the thousands of Nigerian students in Ghana
are paying about US$1 billion annually as
tuition fees and upkeep, as against the
annual budget of US$751 million for all
federal universities in Nigeria.
“In other words, the money spent by
Nigerian students studying in Ghana with a
better organised system is more than the
annual budget of all federal universities in
the country. Nigeria is today placed third on
the list of countries with the highest number
of students studying overseas,” he said.
Sanusi’s extraordinary figures are
considered reliable, since all requests for
overseas remittances – including for
student fee and upkeep payments – go
through the bank.
All these are happening because Nigerians
seems to have lost confidence in the quality
of their educational institutes. And to
corroborate that, most organizations and
educational schools that carried out ranking
of universities keep scoring the country low.
But why does South Africa continued to top
the list of top universities in Africa. Why is it
that universities in the United States and
those in the United Kingdom are always at
the top of world rank of universities in most
of the ranking? Unknown to some, there are
certain criteria or parameters that are used
in ranking universities.
For example, Havard University in the US
has consistently emerged as the best
university in the world since 2003 when
Academic Ranking of World University
(ARWU) started putting together the list. For
2015, eight of the top 10 universities in the
world are from the US, while the remaining
two are in the United Kingdom.
An intend look at the criteria that
researchers at the Center for World-Class
Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, who compiled the ranking for
ARWU shows how they focused on certain
areas as a base for the ranking and why
Nigerian universities are ranked low. The
areas include the number of alumni and
staff winning Nobel Prizes and Field Medals,
the number of highly cited researchers
selected by Thomson Reuters, the number of
articles published in the journals of Nature
and Science, the number of articles indexed
in Science Citation Index Expanded and
Social Sciences Citation Index and per
capita performance of a university.
Ibrahim Ado-Kurawa, an Independent
Researcher from Kano who wrote on the
same issue clarifies the criteria to include:
“quality of education measured by number
of alumni who have major awards such as
Nobel Prize (25%), alumni employment
measured by number of a universities
alumni who have held CEO positions at
world’s top companies (25%), quality of
faculty measured by number of staff in the
university faculty who have major awards
and prizes such as Nobel Prize (25%) in
these three requirements which make up
75%, Nigerian and indeed African
universities stand little chance. The others
that make up 25% (each 5%) are:
Publications measured by number of
research papers appearing in reputable
journals, influence measured by the number
of research papers appearing in highly
influential journals (Nature, Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences USA and
Science), Citations measured by the number
of highly cited research papers, Broad
impact measured by the university’s h-index
and Patents measured by the number of
international patent fillings.”
For each indicator or criteria listed above,
the highest scoring institution is assigned a
score of 100. The distribution of data for
each indicator is examined for any
significant distorting effect; standard
statistical techniques are used to adjust the
indicator if necessary. Scores for each
indicator are weighted to arrive at a final
overall score for an institution.
Also, no institution can be included in the
overall World University Rankings unless it
has published a minimum of 200 research
papers a year over a five-year period it’s
examined.
Narrowing it down to only the criteria of
awarding top mark to a university with a
Noble Prize and other medals, shows why
Nigeria will lag behind. Nigeria has only one
Noble Prize winner – Wole Soyinka who
won in literature, currently is not listed in
any Nigerian University as a staff. However,
Havard University with 21 Noble Prize
winners has more Noble Laureates than the
entire African continent while Columbia
University has 15, even more than the 11 in
Africa, out of which eight are even on Peace
and not academics.
Also, when it comes to citation of influential
journals, it’s difficult to find any Nigerian
academician or professor being featured,
same with the quality of research being
conducted in most of our universities. A
visiting American professor visited a library
in one of the Nigerian university in the north,
it was reported later that he walked out
shaking his head, muttering that the quality
of the library is almost the same with that of
a high school in the US.
A Nigerian university recently celebrated the
production of a car, however, not
begrudging them the success recorded, it
should be noted that the pomp the
production of the car elicited pales into
insignificance when situated with the fact
that kids, years back, in some developed
countries have developed car engines from
the back of their garage in their house.
However, the Executive Secretary of the
National Universities Commission (NUC),
Professor Julius Okojie has noted that the
standard of Nigerian universities was high in
spite of their low global ranking.
Okojie, who said this at the opening of a
two-day workshop on African Centres of
Excellence (ACE) Project Post-Effectiveness
in Abuja, said that the problem with Nigerian
universities was low Internet presence.
According to Okojie, the Nigerian Research
and Education Network (NgREN) is solving
the problem of Internet connectivity in
Nigerian universities, saying it will improve
global presence of Nigerian universities.
“The people that do the ranking do not really
visit universities; they go to the Internet and
find out what you are doing.Whatever
research we are doing should be sent to the
Internet. Money is going into the system for
research.
“I am not disturbed; my concern is whether
Nigerian universities are meeting local and
national needs; whether we are number one
or not does not matter,” he said. We have
made breakthrough whether they rank us or
not; but let us concentrate; we have to
rebrand our universities, they are good.
Challenge our students with students from
any part of the world and they will always
prove themselves,’’ Okojie said.
Apart from all the known fact of increased
funding to our schools, better, developed
and modern facility for learning, Samuel
Zalanga, Department of Anthropology,
Sociology & Reconciliation Studies, Bethel
University, USA advised that “Often there is
no intellectual curiosity among many
Nigerian academics. One suggestion I have
is that recruitment to teach in Nigerian or
African universities must factor in the
question of scholarly passion in the tough
but fruitful quest for knowledge. Without
that kind of passion, how far can people go
in the academy? And to that we must add
the need for a moral and ethical compass,
less we lose our bearing.” That and a strong
and genuine commitment and support from
those in government, would ensure that with
time, we regain our educational pride in
Africa and the world.