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At the end of last month World University Ranking
placed the University of Ilorin 5484th in the world and 55th in Africa
out of a total of 20,000 institutions of higher learning worldwide. The
study was conducted by Webometrics, an initiative of the public
research body called Cybermetrics Lab and based in Spain. In its
previous reports, no Nigerian university has ever been rated among the
first five thousand best in the world.

So, it is a marginal improvement that the
University of Ilorin has shown up on the radar this year. Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, comes second in Nigeria and placed 5756th
in the world and 61st in Africa. It is followed by University of Jos,
University of Lagos, University of Benin, University of Ibadan, and
University of Nigeria Nsukka. They are in the following order 66th,
68th, 77th, 79th, 99th positions in Africa and 5882nd, 5936th, 6324th,
6425th and 7170th in the world.

This system of ranking began in 2004 and results are published twice a year in January and July.

This new ranking may be looked at as positive because in its February rankings we are at 6340th position globally.

The University of Lagos, which ranked 6340th in
February moved up to the 5936th but slipped to the fourth position
among Nigerian universities.

According to the rankings, Africa has only one
university among the first 500 and only five among the first one
thousand in the world. The University of Cape Town, South Africa, which
leads the pack in Africa is ranked 340th in the world! The three other
leaders on the continent are also in South Africa. They are
Stellenbosch University, University of Pretoria, and University of the
Witwatersrand. The three best in the world are Harvard University,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University,
respectively.

The criteria used by Webometrics to arrive at its
rankings may not have been very scientific. However, we agree in
principle with some of its results and rankings. It is nothing too
surprising that a country like Nigeria with over 100 private and public
universities was not able to make the first 500 leading universities in
the world, even though we pride ourselves as the ‘giant of Africa’.

What this report has done is to allow us do a
critical examination of our standards and our mode of training of
students in our higher institutions. The question the Ministry of
Education and the officials of the National Universities Commission
should ask themselves is: what sort of education are we giving our
youth and what future are we preparing them for? As this newspaper has
always emphasised there is a critical need to look inwards and to cast
sober reflection the role our universities are supposed to play in
national development and how much of that they are actually doing.

In the eighties Professor Wole Soyinka and a few
others had suggested the closure of our universities for a period of
one year to allow for a sort of cleansing that would refocus them. This
might have been too harsh, rather like cutting off the head to cure a
headache, but the situation does call for some extreme measures to
address the glaring weaknesses in our education system.

How do we prepare our graduates so that they can
fit seamlessly into a world that has become globalised, and transcends
land and physical borders? There is an urgent need to reshape and
rethink university administration in the country. Increase in quantity
over the years has not brought satisfaction or quality. There are not
enough university places to accommodate the need, and the quality can
be judged by the rankings shown.

What we have at present may call for a concerted approach and active
steps to set off a tsunami in the education sector that will sweep away
the debris and tailor it to our goals for the future.