By Nathaniel Zaccheaus, Abuja
Yesterday, the Senate lamented the increasing spate of brain drains in Nigerian universities, which was caused by poor funding in the education sector.
Therefore, the Senate called for an increase in the yearly budgetary allocations to curb the increasing spate of problems in Nigerian universities.
The Red Chamber said doing so would enable them to tackle infrastructural decay and enhance lecturers’ monthly enumerations.
It also mandated its relevant committees to work with the Ministries of Finance, Education, Health, and other relevant agencies to work out modalities for checking the Increasing spate of brain drain.
The Senate’s resolutions followed a motion sponsored 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 Nigerian University Lecturers are among the poorest in the world, as they were last reviewed over 15 years ago, and this cannot meet the country’s current economic realities.
He added that many universities in other Western African Countries have better working conditions than those in the Nigerian university system, which is somewhat worrisome.
He said, “Brain drain has assumed an unprecedented posture recently due to the country’s current economic situation.
“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,” he said.
Many of the Senators who contributed to the debate on the motion submitted that the problem is not limited to Universities but some other critical sectors, like the health sector, where doctors and Nurses are leaving their jobs in droves every year for greener pastures 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 United States of America alone.
“We shall do our best to improve the number of university teachers and others and curb the problem.”
