The National Universities Commission, NUC, Nigeria’s university education regulator, gave provisional licence to 37 new private universities on 9 June, 2023.
This brings the total number of universities in Nigeria to 264 with the number of private universities at 147.
Private ownership of universities in Nigeria started in 1999 with three universities: Babcock University, Igbinedion University and Madonna University.
The first university in Nigeria is the University of Ibadan which took off in 1948 and is among the 50 Federal Government-owned universities in the country.
The remaining public universities are state-government-owned ones and are mainly universities of Science and Technology awarding mostly degrees like Bachelor of Technology and Bachelor of Agriculture.
The 37 new private universities were approved by the Federal Executive Council, FEC, Nigeria’s highest governing body, on May 15, 2023. FEC earlier approved 12 private universities in April, 2022.
Nigeria has the highest number of universities in Africa and is also the most populous country in the continent.
The Executive Secretary of NUC, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, defended this number for Nigeria’s population of 200 million people, while challenging the new universities to compete with global best practices.
He said the provisional licence is for a period of three years after which, on satisfactory performance, they will be granted substantive licence.
The high number of candidates for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, seeking admission into Nigerian universities is often cited in support of the seemingly, multiplication of universities in Nigeria.
Examples are also given of other countries: The United States has 3,932 schools awarding university degrees in 2023 while United Kingdom has 166.
The population of US by 2023 is 336.68 million while that of UK is 67.62 million people.
But, what of standards especially in the sciences requiring equipment and practical studies?
The best universities in the world like Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Berkeley are in US, while UK has Oxford and Cambridge universities which are also always in the top ten in the world. In US, 56 universities are in the top 100 in the world.
By all the rankings, the University of Ibadan is in the number one position in Nigeria in 2023. A ranking source like Webometrics ranks it number 13 in Africa and number 1,231 in the world. This is an average in all the lists.
The Centre for World University Rankings lists the University of Ibadan as 7th in Africa. The best five universities in Africa are South African universities with the University of Cape Town as number one in Africa and 267 in the world.
Number six in Africa is Cairo University in Giza, Egypt.
South Africa has 117 universities out of which 26 are publicly-owned. The population of South Africa is 61.498 million people.
Indonesia has about 2,642 universities. Fifteen of them are in the top 200 in the world. According to Worldometer, Indonesia has a population of 277.53 million people by 2023.
India, according to the University Grants Commission, has 1,078 universities. The best university in India is the Indian Institute of Science and is number 115 in the world. India has a population of 1.419 billion people and is the most populous country in the world.
China, with a population of 1.4 billion people, is the second most populous country in the world. It has 2,756 universities, 47 of them are among the top 200 in the world.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023 ranks seven Chinese universities among the top 100 in the world.
Tsinghua University and Peking University both in Beijing, the capital, are 16 and 17 respectively in the world.
Some people argue that the existing universities in Nigeria should be strengthened, instead of creating new ones. The fact that no Nigerian university is among the best 1,000 in the world calls for concern when India, Indonesia can boast of universities in the top 200 and South Africa in number 267 in the world.
Nigeria’s high population should therefore, not be a sole determining factor in the number of universities that the country should have.
For eight months from 2022 to 2023, academic staff of government-owned universities in Nigeria were on strike over a dispute on funding and working conditions. There is hardly, an academic year that such a dispute does not arise and disrupt the academic schedule.
With incessant strike action by university teachers in government-owned institutions in Nigeria, the privately-owned universities are gaining appeal among students and their guardians despite the higher fees that they charge.
With more private universities coming on, this makes the question whether there are not too many universities in Nigeria a difficult one to answer.
