UNILAG Loses 239 First-Class Graduate Lecturers In Seven Years Over Poor Pay – Ex-VC Ogundipe
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 astonishing 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 disclosed that between 2015 and 2022, the university had retained 256 first-class graduates as lecturers, adding that 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 stated.
The immediate past Vice-Chancellor of UNILAG, also revealed that in 2015, 86 were recruited as lecturers; 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 of these brilliant brains to poor salaries, lack of research support, and poor welfare conditions.
He emphasized that 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.
According to Ogundipe the quality of postgraduate students would decline if the government failed to act, warning that “the calibre of people who will come for postgraduate studies will be people who are not supposed to come,” he said.
He bemoaned the chronic underfunding of Nigeria’s education sector, stressing that federal and state allocations to education have consistently fallen below the UNESCO recommended benchmark of 15 to 26 per cent, while in most cases, the allocation hovers between 4.5 and 7.5 per cent of the national budget.
Ogundipe, who currently serves as Pro-Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State called for legislation mandating that each first-generation university should receive at least ₦1 billion annually to tackle infrastructural decay.
He stated further 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.
He also lamented the state of infrastructure, technology, and digital facilities in Nigerian universities, noting that most were overstretched, outdated, or completely unavailable, leaving both staff and students frustrated.
He called on policymakers to embrace innovative funding models for education.
He cited the UNESCO’s recommendation, and mulled strategies such as public-private partnerships, alumni endowments, philanthropy, education bonds, and leveraging Nigeria’s large diaspora population for targeted investments.
Ogundipe said, “Innovative mechanisms for education 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 urged 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 added.
Ogundipe advocated that 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 emphasized.