No fewer than 239 first-class graduates employed as lecturers at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) have left the institution within the last seven years, largely due to poor remuneration and unfavourable working conditions.
This startling revelation was made by the immediate past Vice-Chancellor of UNILAG, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, while delivering a lecture at The PUNCH Forum on Tuesday. The event, themed “Innovative Funding of Functional Education in the Digital Age,” was held at The PUNCH Place, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Ogundipe explained that between 2015 and 2022, the university had retained 256 first-class graduates as lecturers. However, as of October 2023, only 17 of them remained in the institution’s employment, with the majority leaving Nigeria in search of better opportunities.
“At UNILAG, we decided that those with first-class honours should be employed. What is remaining is not up to 10 per cent. All of them have gone,” Ogundipe lamented. He further revealed that in 2015, 86 were recruited; in 2016, another 82; and during his tenure between 2017 and 2022, 88 were employed. “As of October 2023, only 17 were on the ground. They have gone,” he added.
He attributed the exodus to poor salaries, lack of research support, and poor welfare conditions. According to him, unless something urgent is done, Nigeria’s universities risk being dominated by women in the next decade, as many male lecturers are leaving the system in large numbers.
Ogundipe also warned that the quality of postgraduate students would decline if the government failed to act. “The calibre of people who will come for postgraduate studies will be people who are not supposed to come,” he said, hinting at declining academic standards.
He lamented the chronic underfunding of Nigeria’s education sector, noting that federal and state allocations to education have consistently fallen below the UNESCO recommended benchmark of 15 to 26 per cent. In most cases, he said, the allocation hovers between 4.5 and 7.5 per cent of the national budget.
The former vice-chancellor called for legislation mandating that each first-generation university should receive at least ₦1 billion annually to tackle infrastructural decay. He stressed that without such guaranteed funding, universities would continue to rely heavily on Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), which should instead be directed towards research and innovation.
Ogundipe, who currently serves as Pro-Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, bemoaned the state of infrastructure, technology, and digital facilities in Nigerian universities. He said most were overstretched, outdated, or completely unavailable, leaving both staff and students frustrated.
He also urged policymakers to embrace innovative funding models for education. Citing UNESCO’s recommendation, he suggested strategies such as public-private partnerships, alumni endowments, philanthropy, education bonds, and leveraging Nigeria’s large diaspora population for targeted investments.
“Innovative mechanisms for education,” Ogundipe said, “include shared risk/reward models for infrastructure, investors repaid only if outcomes are achieved, risk capital for EdTech, debt swaps for education, and corporate donations tied to measurable outcomes.”
He also appealed to the private sector to see investment in education not just as corporate social responsibility but as enlightened self-interest. “The private sector should invest in infrastructure, people, curricula, and research that will build the workforce and markets of tomorrow,” he noted.
In his closing remarks, Ogundipe called on alumni, civil society, faith-based groups, donor agencies, and ordinary Nigerians to see education as a sacred trust. “Our fingerprints, our footprints, our names should be found in the library buildings, the digital labs, the scholarships, and the lives changed,” he concluded.
