29 Nigerian varsities in THE ranking nothing to celebrate – ASUU president

In this interview with WALE AKINSELURE, President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Chris Piwuna, examines the recently released Times Higher Education ranking that featured 29 Nigerian universities, arguing that the Federal Government’s celebration of the feat is misplaced amid persistent challenges in funding, research, staffing and learning conditions

The Federal Government says the 29 Nigerian universities featured in the 2027 THE ranking show that its reforms are working. Is that assessment justified?

When you meet a tortoise at a spot, and you come back tomorrow and find him 10 feet away from where he was yesterday, he has moved, hasn’t he? But you know that you could get a rabbit at a spot, and when you come back today, you can’t even see it. Our union is embarrassed that we have moved just five spaces from the number in the 2026 ranking, and that’s what we’re celebrating as Nigeria. We have been talking about these things for years. The key things that these assessments look at are research and its impact. They look at the environment in which our students learn. They look at the employability of our students after they graduate. For Nigeria that we should be proud of, is it a movement from 24 to 29 that we should be celebrating? How many of these 29 are even within the 1,000 mark range? We have three, and one of them is a private university. So, two universities. I don’t think there is anything to celebrate.

In fact, it should make the minister and the ministry roll up their sleeves and know that there is more to do. We have talked about research time and again. We have included it in our agreement with government because we know that if we want to improve the standing of our universities, we need to have research take off the right way. Is that what we’re doing? The funding to our institutions- how much are we giving to our institutions? Rather than ask TETFund to commit more to some of these areas, what they are busy doing is to ensure that they get TETFund to release more money for consultants to do this or that. Don’t get me wrong. TETFund is one of the best things that have happened to us in this country. And I believe that the current Executive Secretary has really improved the quantum of money that goes to research. But we need much more. I congratulate the three universities that have made it into the first thousand. And the 29 in general that are there. But I honestly don’t think, as a country, there is anything to celebrate.

It should make us realise that we are very far from our goals. The minister and all those who are involved in government should know that they have a lot of work to do, because for us to celebrate what we have now is to be complacent about the whole thing. So we should avoid complacency. I don’t think there is anything to celebrate.

Doesn’t the increase from 24 to 29 show that the ASUU agitations, over the years, are being attended to?

It shows that the agitations of our union over the years have not been attended to. This is because if they had improved funding, if they had taken research more seriously than they have, if they had understood that the staff-to-student ratio is a matter that needs to be addressed, they would have taken steps to reverse the downward trend. But they haven’t done it. That’s why till tomorrow, we’re still talking about excess workload in our universities. What is the staff-to-student ratio? It’s one of the parameters that are assessed. The issue of excess workload came about because we had complained that the number of students and the staff-to-student ratio are not what they should be.

You mentioned staff-student ratio as one of the problems affecting universities. What should the ratio be, and how far are Nigerian universities from that standard?

There is a standard for different courses, a staff mix by rank. Every university should have a 20:35:45 ratio for Professors/Readers: Senior Lecturers: Lecturer 1 and below, so it makes a complete mix of staff. And the staff-student ratio should be 1 to 15, depending on the speciality. The staff-student ratio for sciences is not the same as the staff-student ratio for humanities or even social sciences. Some are 1 to 15, 1 to 19, 1 to 30; it varies. But is that what we have today? Is that what we have today? How many medical schools are losing accreditation because of the staff-to-student ratio? How many departments are losing accreditation because of the staff-to-student ratio? These are things that we have been talking about for years. But each time we raise these concerns, you know, it just falls on deaf ears. That’s why they can come up and say we have moved from 24 to 29, and that we have made a giant leap. The illustration about the tortoise and the hare that I made, I think, should help us realise that we’re celebrating non-performance. When was Covenant University established? When was Bayero University, Kano established? When was Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria established? When was the University of Jos established?

When was the University of Benin established? So, I think that this is just a wake-up call. If the minister had agreed that it’s a wake-up call, I would have celebrated it. But for him to celebrate that this is an achievement! I read somewhere that about 49 universities in Pakistan made it into the THE. And we are celebrating an increase of five universities?

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So, what would be worth celebrating?

24 universities were already there; we have just increased by five, and some of them are private universities. I’m not talking about 29, per se. I’m saying that, what has been the progression? If ABU was there, Ibadan was there, Nsukka was there, and they are still there, is that progress? I thought we should be adding new institutions, that their research output has doubled, that the employability of their students is higher than what it was before now, that the learning environment in these institutions has improved to the extent that we’re having more ABUs, more Ibadan, more Nsukka, more UNIJOS. That’s what I thought we should be celebrating. That’s what we should be celebrating. There is a news channel that says they’ve been voted the best for 10 years or 20 years. Why can’t we talk about other news channels that are also being celebrated that way? What’s happening to the others?

What must the Federal Government, university authorities and academics themselves do differently in the next three years to significantly improve Nigeria’s global university rankings?

Part of what we need to do as a country is in our 2025 agreement. It was in our 2009 agreement, and even previous agreements. What our institutions need to do has already been outlined in this agreement. Other things need to be done, but that is contingent on that agreement. The attitude of staff and our commitment to work are things that are also going to contribute to the improvement in our rankings. But how can you be committed to a job when the environment is not conducive to you? How can you commit yourself to an academic environment where the authorities are not interested in funding or supporting research? Let me tell you another index of this ranking. For one to be able to publish in Q1 high-impact journals, the average cost of publication in those journals is about $2,000.

Who will pay for it? Who can afford it? Your salary is wiped out by the end of one week after receiving it, due to fuel and the high cost of living. We can’t overdo ourselves. The atmosphere and the environment need to be conducive for us to be able to work on it. There are things that we could do to improve it. But most of it is in our agreement. There are things that we need to do as academic staff. I believe that we can improve if those things are put in place. Like we’ve always said in ASUU, try us and see. Those who have done well in Covenant University, who got them to where they are today, were given an opportunity.

Regarding the 2025 agreement, the Federal Government, last month, said it released funds for the payment of Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance. Why did ASUU, just hours after that announcement, threaten another strike?

They released arrears of five months, but that’s not the one we’re talking about. Before the arrears of the five months, we’ve been struggling. Why are they even paying it in arrears? Was it meant to be paid in arrears? Then, even after the five months that it was released, the universities were struggling. The government is saying that they have released the money. Vice-Chancellors are saying there is no money. We’ve been asking the two of them, the Vice-Chancellors and the Federal Ministry of Education, who is not telling us the truth? Somebody is certainly not telling us what the real situation is. The Ministry is saying no university would say they cannot pay. Vice-Chancellors are saying they cannot pay. So, we are caught in the middle. Since nobody is talking to us, we know how to talk.

Some state universities are still on strike. How many state governments have keyed into the 2025 agreement?

Most of them have improved. I think the only universities that are still on strike now are the three state universities in Lagos. Taraba State is unwilling. They will hear from us soon. A good number of states have keyed into the 2025 agreement. We want to thank all the state governors that have agreed to implement this 2025 agreement. We want to especially thank every one of them who has shown interest in the university system by implementing this agreement. We appreciate those state governors.