Peter Okebukola, former executive secretary of the National University Commission (NUC), said the University of Ibadan was deserving of the best university in 2021 award.

Mr Okebukola, who heads the ranking committee set up by NUC, stated this at a two-day capacity building workshop organised by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund(TETFund) on Monday in Abuja.

The pro-chancellor and governing council chairman of the National Open University (NOUN) was one of the lead presenters at the workshop.

He said UI met the year’s ranking criteria, adding that the ranking was carried out using 12 indicators involving 113 universities across Nigeria.

The Federal University of Technology Akure came second.

Mr Okebukola explained that the institutions were ranked based on full-time students, international students, students and staff ratio, efficiency, Google scholar index, and contribution to the knowledge economy.

Other criteria, according to him, are the percentage of international staff, the percentage of programmes with full-time accreditation, and all citations per capita.

He said the full report on the ranking would be made available to NUC and uploaded on its website.

“For this 2021 edition, based on the 12 indicators that we have developed, University of Ibadan is the first followed by the Federal University of Technology Akure. Next year we will look at the indicators that we used this year and see whether there are things to add or drop,” added Mr Okebukola. “So it is going to be an annual thing. The full report of the ranking which covers the best university in each region of the country with details of every statistics will be released soonest.”

(NAN)