Nigeria’s universities demonstrate some strengths but are having a tough time getting international recognition because lecturers hardly publish in peer reviewed journals and very few participate in exchange programmes with foreign universities.
Andreas Blom, Task Team Lead, the World Bank Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) disclosed this recently at the Opening of the Seventh Regional Project Workshop of Excellence (ACE) in Lagos. ACE is a US$150 million World Bank Project for African Universities, with a focus on advanced specialised studies in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-related disciplines, in addition to agriculture and health.
“The parameters for the ranking of world universities vary slightly from one ranking agency to the other. However, the major indices include visibility through publications, patents and inventions. Similarly, the rate of employment and destination of graduates at the workplace also counts, as well as the international mix of staff and students,” said Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe, former vice chancellor, University of Lagos.
“Earlier, some of our older universities that were able to have these parameters, lost them during the incessant strikes by staff and students. We need a steady calendar to attract international staff and students. We need a reasonable level of research infrastructure to publish peer reviewed articles in high impact journals and we need excellent teachers to enable our graduates to perform confidently in the work place,” Ibidapo-Obe added.
This has not always been the case, because “30 years ago, or in the 70s and even 80s, foreign lecturers came for sabbaticals in Nigerian universities because the standard met global best practices. Universities were well funded; the career path of lecturers began by being a first class student. What mattered was what you had upstairs not who you knew, or how politically savvy you were,” said Victor Odumuyiwa, lecturer in the Computer Science department, University of Lagos.
Blom contended that Nigeria is the biggest country in Africa and has ten out of the 22 Africa Centres of Excellence in seven countries of West and Central Africa. Africa’s most populous nation has strong universities but they are not well-recognised internationally. “So the quality needs to be raised with the assistance of the ACE programme.’’
The ACE is designed to reverse a serious shortage of skilled workers in fast-growing sectors such as extractive industries, energy, water, and infrastructure, as well as in the fields of health and telecommunications. The result of having too few skilled workers in Africa’s extractive industries is that oil and minerals are extracted in Africa but processed elsewhere in the world, to the detriment of African industries and jobs.
Africa also suffers from a shortage of trained health workers who can provide high quality maternal health services. This may partially explain why Africa’s maternal mortality rate has remained so tragically high at 500 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
“One of the biggest problems we have is a case of Nigerians de-marketing our educational system. We hardly see anything good in the university system. That we have ten centres of the 22 in Nigeria is a testament to our ability to deliver. For instance, the World Bank acknowledged the role our centre played in dealing with the Lassa and Ebola fever outbreaks,” said Debo Adeyewa, vice chancellor of Redeemer’s University, which is home to one of the ACE centres. Adeyewa spoke in a phone interview.
“The other challenge is that government is not doing enough to create a requisite enabling environment for research and development. For example, funding will remain a big problem until it is properly addressed. Schools need to be able to access loans at single digit interest rates to develop infrastructure,” Adeyewa added.
Peter Okebukola, former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and chairman of Crawford University governing board, has attributed the development to the decay in the country’s educational sector and the incessant strikes which had disrupted schools’ calendar.
“The most critical indicator in university ranking is quality and quantity of research. Another strong indicator is the international component of staff and students. Most of our universities have sparse international students or none at all. International staff is also scanty. The poor resourcing of our universities accounts in large part for international students and staff not coming to study and to teach respectively,” Okebukola added.
The ten ACE centres in Nigeria are as follows, Africa Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), Redeemers University, Ede, Osun state; PAN African Materials Institute, (PAMI), African University of Science & Technology, Abuja; Center for Agricultural Development & Sustainable Environment, (CEADESE), Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta and the Centre of Excellence on Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology, (ACENTDFB), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Others include, Phytomedicine Research & Development, (ACEPRD), University of Jos; Center for Excellence in Reproductive Health and Innovation, (CERHI), University of Benin; ACE Center for Oil Field Chemicals, (CEFOR), University of Port-Harcourt; OAU Knowledge Park, OAK-Park, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife; African Centre of Excellence (ACE) in Dryland Agriculture, (CDA), Bayero University, Kano and Centre for Food Technology and Research, (CEFTER), Benue State University, Makurdi.
STEPHEN ONYEKWELU
