The Senate has called for improved budgetary allocations to universities in the 2025 budget to check brain drain and other challenges in the universities.

The Senate’s decision followed the adoption of a motion, “Urgent Need to address challenges of increasing cases of brain drain in the Nigerian University System”, sponsored by Anthony Ani (APC- Ebonyi) at plenary on Tuesday.

Mr Ani said that over the years, there has been a significant outflow of highly educated professionals in Nigeria, especially academia, in quest of better working conditions.

According to him, this worsened the skill gap in the workforce and could hinder the country’s economic growth and development.

Mr Ani said the National Universities Commission (NUC) report indicated that many Nigerian universities operate with less than 50 per cent of the required academic staff.

He expressed worry that the remunerations of Nigerian university lecturers were among the poorest in the world, and it was last reviewed over 15 years ago.

The lawmaker said this cannot meet the country’s current economic realities.

“Also worried that brain drain has assumed an unprecedented posture in recent time due to the current economic situation of the country,” Mr Ani said.

He stressed that the brain drain syndrome in Nigeria should be a cause for concern, as it threatens the survival of the nation‘s higher education, particularly in engineering, medicine and sciences.

However, in its other resolution, the Senate mandated the Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFUND to liaise with relevant government agencies and work out modalities to check the spate of brain drain in Nigerian universities.

In his remarks, Senate President Godswill Akpabio said all hands must be on deck to propose solutions to the issue of brain drain as a concern in the nation’s tertiary education.

He said the reasons for the brain drain were basically economic and believed that a review of the employment of personnel in tertiary institutions would help mitigate it.

(NAN)