Despite the clamour of inadequate funding, infrastructure gaps, shortage of academic staff, numerous strikes, poor research work, weak or poor administration, brain drain, recently escalated by the Japa syndrome and, lately, insecurity, Nigerian universities have continued to churn our first class graduates in large numbers. The trend is a marked departure from the old order where only very few and the very best in the country’s Ivory Towers made this category of degrees in various disciplines.
Most of the strikes embarked upon by ASUU were linked to the deplorable state of the Ivory Towers, which the union claimed were not suitable for producing world-class graduates. It is against this backdrop that concerns are raised in some quarters why the universities have continued to churn out this class of graduates.
67 of the nation’s 272 universities, which held either their single or combined convocations between March 2023 and March 2024, produced a total of 6,464 first-class graduates. These figures were obtained from the convocation addresses of the vice-chancellors and other authorized officials of the universities covered by the findings.
A breakdown of the figures showed that federal universities topped the ladder with 3,736, or 57.79 per cent, first-class graduates followed by those owned by the states, which accounted for 1,458, or 22.55 per cent, while private universities came a distant third with 1,270, or 19.64 per cent, of the total number of first-class graduates produced during the period under review. Overall, 23 federal universities produced 3,736 first-class graduates while 18 state universities graduated 1,458, and 26 private universities accounted for 1,270.
