Prof Abimbola Sounds Alarm: Nigerian Universities Face Imminent Collapse !

Former OAU Vice-Chancellor Prof Wande Abimbola has issued a stark warning about the imminent collapse of Nigeria’s university system due to poor funding and scandalously low pay for professors, urging urgent government intervention to save the academic sector. He revealed that Nigerian professors earn monthly salaries comparable to what a gardener in the US makes in three hours, highlighting the deep neglect from both federal and state governments as the universities’ standard continues to decline.

Prof Abimbola made these remarks during the Boiling Point Arena discourse monitored live across several media platforms. He lamented that Nigerian universities, once ranked among the top 500 globally and top 11 in Africa, have slipped into the top 1000 category due to the impoverishment of academic staff who now struggle to attend international conferences or contribute to global academic journals. Despite this decay, new universities continue to be established even though existing ones lack adequate funding and support.

He called for an urgent Federal Government bailout and the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to propose actionable steps to revive the university system. According to recent data, Nigerian professors earn about ₦500,000 monthly, which aligns with Prof Abimbola’s comparison to the earnings of American gardeners for a few hours of work, exposing the low remuneration against increasing living costs and professional demands.

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The broader context includes calls from the Nigerian Senate for increased university funding in the 2025 budget, addressing decades of neglect and declining standards, alongside a federal government moratorium on new federal universities to focus resources on revitalizing existing institutions. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) salary structure shows professors earn between ₦381,695 and ₦501,680 monthly in federal universities, a figure criticized for being insufficient relative to the demands of the profession and global academic standards.