First Class Drain: Nigeria Continues to Lose Her Best Brains
- There is a huge drain of first-class graduates in Nigeria at the end of every convocation ceremony
- This is because the Nigerian government has no plan or policy to recruit them into the university system for research purposes
- Failure to retain them and lack of proper policies to harness their intelligence eventually leads to the nation losing them to developed countries
Legit.ng journalist Adekunle Dada has over 5-year-experience covering basic and tertiary education in Nigeria and worldwide
Seven public universities across Nigeria in the past year have produced nothing less than 1,899 first-class graduates.
As reported by Vanguard, the universities are the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife (OAU), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (ABU), the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), University of Lagos (UNILAG).
Source: Facebook
Others are the University of Ibadan (UI), the University of Benin (UNIBEN) and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).
However, the best brains are not being utilised for the development of the nation.
Unlike in the developed countries where first class graduates are retained in the university system, Nigeria has no plan of harnessing her best brains.
Efforts are not made to retain them and they are gradually lost to the Western world.
Speaking on this, the Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Adebayo Bamire, expressed:
“We are ready to retain our First Class graduates; there is no need to even think twice on that, but then what is the policy of government in respect to recruitment in the universities? We can’t do that on our own”
He added that:
“For us, we don’t want to throw away our First Class students but because of the limitations that we have, it appears very difficult for us to retain them.
“You know the university is not autonomous to that extent. We just have to be looking ahead that policies of government will favour us to be able to do so”.
Nigeria's eggheads lost to developed countries
Ayodele Daniel Dada, who graduated with a perfect CPGA of 5.0 during the 2014/2015 convocation ceremony of UNILAG travelled to the United States to further studies in Psychology at Stanford University in 2019
The Ekiti State-born is probably still there contributing to the knowledge base of the US.
Another perfect 5.0 CGPA graduate was Miss Motunrayo Ajia in 2018/19 from the Department of Petroleum Engineering, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun state.
Ajia later went to the University of Oxford, England for her master’s degree in Energy Systems and has been part of the Africa Oxford Initiative of Oxford University.
The story was the same with Ewerechukwu Asaka from the Department of Computer Engineering in the 2020/21 session from Covenant University.
Asaka won a master’s degree programme scholarship courtesy of the Rhodes Scholarship for West Africa and will be attending Oxford University.
These are a few Nigerian young eggheads who are lost to other nations, especially developed ones where they go for further studies.
How I secured scholarships, Nile University first-class graduate reveals
Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that 21-year-old Jameswilliams Chiahukamnanya Gabriel narrated how he secured scholarships for his undergraduate and master’s degree programmes at Nile University, Abuja.
The first-class graduate of Economics disclosed that a Public Relations Officer from Nile University visited his secondary school when he learned about the scholarship and its requirements.
CU First-Class Graduate Repeats Dad’s Academic Feat 25 Years After
A first-class graduate of Mass Communication from Crawford University, Ogun State, Eniola Oluwagunna, brought smiles to the faces of her parents as she repeated her father’s academic feat 25 years after he graduated.
Eniola graduated with a cumulative grade point average of 4.91 to emerge as the best graduating student with seven awards.
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Source: Legit.ng
