End Brain Drain, Increase Budgetary Allocation for Varsities, Senate Urges FG

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja 

The Senate yesterday lamented the increasing brain drain in Nigerian universities caused by poor funding of the education sector.

The Senate therefore called for an increase in the yearly budgetary allocations to curb the increasing spate of the problem in Nigerian universities.

The red chamber said doing so would enable them to tackle infrastructural decay and enhance monthly enumerations of lecturers.

It also mandated its relevant committees to relate with Ministries of Finance, Education, Health and other relevant agencies to work out modalities for checking increasing brain drain.

Senate’s resolutions followed a motion sponsored to that effect by Senator Anthony Ani (APC Ebonyi South).

Senator Ani’s motion was titled, “Urgent Need to address the challenges of increasing cases of Brain Drain in the Nigerian University System.”

Quoting the National Universities Commission (NUC) report, Ani said many Nigerian universities operate with less than 50 percent of the required academic staff due to brain drain.

According to him, the remunerations of the Nigerian University Lecturers are among the poorest in the world, as it was last reviewed over 15 years ago and this cannot meet the current economic realities of the country.

He added that many universities in other Western African countries have better working conditions than what is obtainable in the Nigerian university system, and this rather worrisome.

He said: “Brain drain has assumed an unprecedented posture in recent time, 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.”

Many of the Senators who contributed to debate on the motion, submitted that the problem is not limited to the universities but some other critical sectors like the health sector where doctors and nurses are leaving their jobs in droves on yearly basis for greener pasture in abroad.

The President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio said: “Brain drain is a big problem not just in the education sector but in some other critical sector like the health sector where not let down 22,000 Nigerian Health Workers are in the US alone.

“We shall surely do our best to improve the lots of Universities teachers and others, in curbing the problem.”