Ibrahim Babangida cultivated his desire to become a university professor while growing up in Danbare, a remote region in Kano State’s Ungogo Local Government District. Despite facing financial obstacles and serious health issues, he self-funded his education at Bayero University Kano (BUK) through menial and part-time jobs. In 2019, he graduated as the top student in the department of Agricultural Engineering with a CGPA of 4.60.
Babangida later obtained a foreign scholarship, and in 2021, he graduated with honours from Mewar University in India with a Master of Technology in Renewable Energy. He is currently employed by BUK, the same institution from which he received his degree as one of the top students and an internet café shopkeeper.
Babangida’s teaching ambitions have been shattered by a system that doesn’t honour top-notch graduates. During an interview in the cafe where he offered typing, photocopying, and printing services, he told our reporter, “I still have hope in the future.” Ibrahim Babangida is one of the many first-class graduates in Nigeria who have been forced to work in small enterprises to survive.
Nigeria’s public colleges turn away prospective scholars who graduated as the top students in their class as the nation continues to lose its brightest minds to foreign nations. First-class honours graduates, who often score 70% or above overall, are at the top. They are expected to continue their academic education because they are seen as potential scholars. Nevertheless, many of them struggle to find employment and are not given the chance to work for the tertiary education system that helped to develop them.
“First class graduates of any Nigerian university are people who have outstanding achievement, are very intelligent, very clever, much focused and very good. And to be frank, these are the kind of materials needed to run the universities, highly motivated people,” said a former Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Abdallah Ubah Adamu.
A sampling of six federal universities, one from each of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, shows that 1,617 first-class graduates were produced throughout the previous three academic years.
According to data assessed by Daily Trust Saturday, the University of Lagos in the South West produced 797 first-class graduates over the previous three academic years, while Bayero University in Kano, in the North West, produced 304. The University of Jos, in the North Central, produced 106 first-class graduates while in the North East, the University of Maiduguri produced 78 first-class graduates in the last three sessions. In the South East, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, produced 226 first-class graduates and the University of Port Harcourt, in the South-South, produced 106 first-class graduates in their respective last three academic sessions.
Although this paper could not confirm whether any first-class graduates entered the tertiary education system during the aforementioned period, the House of Representatives had urged the Ministry of Education to work with relevant governmental organisations to guarantee their employment in 2022.
Retaining first-class graduates will tackle strikes—Education Ministry
Nigeria’s Ministry of Education argues that the retention of first-class graduates will solve the manpower challenges in the universities and adherently resolve the periodic crisis between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government.
The union has constantly embarked on strike actions as a result of the government’s failure to meet some of the union’s demands, which include revitalisation funds for universities, the release of earned allowances for university lecturers, deployment of the University Transparency Accountability System (UTAS) for the payment of salaries and allowances of lecturers.
“The retention of the best brains will solve the manpower challenges every university will have. This manpower requirement is a question of earned academic allowances, which in simple terms means payment of excess workload,” said Ben Bem Goong, the Director, Press and PR department of the Federal Ministry of Education.
“If you retain the best of graduates, it means that year in and out, you will have at least one or two graduates of every department and the issue of excess load will no longer arise. Don’t forget, earned academic allowances have been one of the basic issues cited by the ASUU virtually in all the strikes they had over the years; earned academic allowance is an issue,” he said.
“Go back to the history of ASUU strikes, every strike that ASUU embarked upon, unpaid academic allowance was part of the reasons. So, if you return to that, it means that is going to be sorted out,” he said.
FG’s embargo on employment to blame—Former VC
While continuing to struggle for survival, Ibrahim Babangida’s passion for teaching and sharing knowledge is demonstrated in his dedication to tutoring young students and helping them excel in their academic endeavours.
Like Babangida, Muhammad Tukur, a first-class chemistry graduate from North-West University Kano, hoped to teach at the university after obtaining his master’s degree in 2021. He now teaches in a private secondary school in Kano.
“I have aspired to become a lecturer in my department. If I can remember, right from my 100L, most of our lecturers motivated us to graduate with first class. As pioneer students, they assured us that we would be retained by the university, and that motivated me to graduate with a first-class,” he said.
But Prof. Abdallah Ubah Adamu says Tukur’s predicament could be linked to the Federal government’s employment embargo.
In 2020, the Federal Government placed an embargo on all recruitment into its Civil Service to maintain the workforce and stop the increase in the size of the nominal roll. However, in 2021, the House of Representatives urged the government to lift the embargo to tackle rising idleness among Nigerians.
“Not offering jobs to first-class graduates is not necessarily a policy of the universities,” said Prof. Adamu who explained that the government’s restriction of employment regardless of grade is why many first-class graduates are unable to gain employment in the tertiary education system.
“It is a national policy. There is a restriction on employment because of IPPIS and all that. So, even if they (universities) want to do that, the trouble that they have to go through to get just a slot for one person is too much,” he said.
The former vice-chancellor, however, said it would take a rigorous process for a university to employ one first-class graduate. “You have to go to the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, you have to write to the NUC, you have to write to the Federal Character Commission, I mean, there are so many things you have to do to employ just one person. So, they (universities) feel like it is simply not worth it,” he explained.
Government should consider a policy on retaining first-class graduates – NUC
Reviewing official public documents of the National Universities Commission, Daily Trust gathered that no existing government policy exists for retaining first-class graduates in Nigeria. However, the NUC, which works to improve the quality of Nigeria’s university education, stated that the retention of first-class graduates will help the system grow better.
“The first-class graduates are supposed to be retained because the university, as it is, is an elitist system whereby they would be able to help the system grow better because they were trained solidly in the enterprise of knowledge,” said the acting Director of Public Affairs of the NUC, Haruna Lawal Ajoh.
“Universities are autonomous, and so hire and fire without the commission’s interference,” he said, urging the government to consider a policy for retaining the best graduates to help the universities grow and develop.
