Senate demands increased funding for varsities

The Senate, on Tuesday, called on the Federal Government to increase budgetary allocations to federal universities in the 2025 budget to help address the brain drain plaguing Nigerian universities.

It also mandated its relevant committees to collaborate with the Ministries of Finance, Education, Health, and other relevant agencies to develop strategies to tackle infrastructural decay and improve the monthly remuneration of lecturers.

The Senate’s resolutions followed a motion sponsored by Senator Anthony Ani (APC, Ebonyi South), titled “Urgent Need to Address the Challenges of Increasing Cases of Brain Drain in the Nigerian University System.”

In the motion, Ani lamented that, according to the National Universities Commission report, many Nigerian universities operate with less than 50 per cent of the required academic staff due to brain drain.

He pointed out that the remuneration for Nigerian university lecturers was among the lowest globally, having not been reviewed in over 15 years, which no longer aligned with the current economic realities of the country.

He further highlighted that many universities in other West African countries offered better working conditions than what was obtainable in Nigeria, describing the situation as deeply troubling.

He said, “Brain drain has assumed an unprecedented posture in recent times, due to the current economic situation of the country. This should be a cause for concern, as it threatens the survival of the country’s higher education, particularly in the engineering, medicine, and sciences, which are critical for the socio-economic development of this country.”

Several senators, who contributed to the debate, noted that the problem extended beyond universities to other critical sectors, such as healthcare, where doctors and nurses were leaving in large numbers every year for better opportunities abroad.

In his remarks, after the debate, the Senate President. Godswill Akpabio, emphasised the severity of the issue, stating that, “Brain drain is a big problem not just in the education sector but in other critical sectors like the health sector, where no fewer than 22,000 Nigerian health workers are in the United States of America alone.

We shall surely do our best to improve the situation for university teachers and others, in curbing this problem.”