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The Senate has called for increased budgetary allocations in the 2025 budget to federal universities to tackle brain drain syndrome in universities.
Amid the call for increased allocation to universities, Senate also mandated relevant committees to partner with the Ministries of Finance, Education, Health, to bridge the infrastructural gap and lecturers' remunerations.
The Senate’s resolutions followed a motion sponsored by Senator Anthony Ani (APC, Ebonyi South), titled, 'Urgent Need to Address the Challenges of Increasing Cases of Brain Drain in the Nigerian University System.'
In the motion, Ani's lamentation boiled from the report of the National Universities Commission which indicated that many Nigerian universities operate with less than 50 per cent of the required academic staff due to brain drain.
He said Nigerian university lecturers had the poorest remunerations globally, adding that for the past 15 years, there wasn't any review done.
Ani said, “Brain drain has assumed an unprecedented posture in recent times, due to the current economic situation of the country. 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.”
Several senators, who contributed to the debate, noted that the problem extended beyond universities to other critical sectors, such as Health.
In his remarks, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, emphasised the severity of the issue, stating that, “Brain drain is a big problem not just in the education sector but in other critical sectors like Health, where no fewer than 22,000 Nigerian health workers are in the United States of America alone.
“We shall surely do our best to improve the situation for university teachers and others, in curbing this problem.”
