Brain drain: Senate seeks budgetary increase for universities

The Nigerian Senate on Tuesday lamented the increase in the menace of brain drain rocking Nigerian universities and other critical sectors of the country.

To tackle the trend, it called on the Nigerian government to increase its yearly budgetary allocations to solve infrastructural decay and enhance monthly enumerations of lecturers.

It also mandated its relevant committees to relate with the Ministries of Finance, Education, Health and other relevant agencies to work out modalities for checking the increasing spate of brain drain.

The Senate’s resolutions followed a motion sponsored to that effect by Senator Anthony Ani, representing Ebonyi South Senatorial District.

Senator Ani, in the motion titled “Urgent Need to Address the Challenges of Increasing Cases of Brain Drain in the Nigerian University System,” lamented that the National Universities Commission report showed that many Nigerian universities operate with less than 50 per cent of the required academic staff due to brain drain.

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According to him, the remunerations of Nigerian university lecturers are among the poorest in the world, as it was last reviewed over 15 years ago and this cannot meet the current economic realities of the country.

He added that many universities in other West African countries have better working conditions than what is obtainable in the Nigerian university system, and this is rather worrisome.

“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,” he said.

Many of the senators who contributed to the debate on the motion, submitted that the problem is not limited to the universities but some other critical sectors like the health sector, where doctors and nurses are leaving their jobs in droves yearly for greener pastures abroad.

In his remarks after exhaustive debate on the motion, the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, said: “Brain drain is a big problem not just in the education sector but in some other critical sector like the health sector, where not less than 22,000 Nigerian health workers are in the United States of America alone.

“We shall surely do our best to improve the lots of university teachers and others in curbing the problem.”