The Academic Staff Union of Universities has said that until the government decides to improve the conditions of service of university lecturers in the country, the brain drain experienced in tertiary institutions will not end.
ASUU’s National Investment Secretary and former chairman of the union, University of Port Harcourt chapter, Dr Austen Sado, said that the dearth of professors in Nigerians universities could be traced to the massive departures of lecturers from the country in search of better condition of service.
Sado urged the Federal Government to improve the conditions of service of the Nigerian lecturers and ensure that they were at par with other universities in Africa.
Speaking in a telephone interview with Saturday PUNCH, Sado also stressed that the scarcity of professors in the country, which had stalled the full accreditation of courses in many universities by the National Universities Commission, had been worsened by the unwillingness of young people to go through the rigours of earning their doctorate degrees, not to talk of spending years to become professors.
UI distance learning programme resumes amidst ASUU strike
On the lingering ASUU strike, he stressed that many students did not return to further their studies because they knew that lecturers were underpaid and underappreciated.
He said, “It is an open secret that because of the conditions of service in Nigerian universities, a lot of lecturers are going out (of the country), which is what we call brain drain. A lot of lecturers are going out. They are specialists in some areas and when they go out, they do so with a fellowship and they do not come back.
“To deal with that issue of brain drain, I think the government must try to have an African average. In the top African countries, professors get as much as $3,000 to $5,000 as salary. But in Nigeria, with the present exchange rate, it is just between $500 and $600.
“If you (government) enhance the salaries of lecturers, they will stay behind and that will give them a sense of stability in the system. Then students from, at least, West African countries, who used to be students in our country in past, will come to our universities.”
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