Despite the exodus of university teachers and attendant shortage of manpower in public universities nationwide, the non-retention policy of the Federal Government has caused over 5,032 first-class graduates to languish in the job market and far away from the tertiary institutions that erstwhile retained them.
• Unmet vacancies of lecturers: UNILORIN 500, Gusau, 600; FUNAAB 350-plus
Checks by The Guardian showed that about 500 academic vacancies exist at the University of Ilorin , while the Academic Staff Union of Universities at the Federal University, Gusau, Zamfara, disclosed that the institution needed about 600 lecturers to fill the vacancies created by those who had left.
Graduates of first-class degrees are at the top of their class, with an average of 70 per cent or more overall. They are viewed as potential scholars and often expected to pursue further academic studies. However, many of them are denied the opportunity to work in the institutions that produced them.
For instance, the immediate past vice-chancellor of UNILAG, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, said the institution employed about 100 graduates of the university, who made first class in their various fields of studies. Worried by the growing number of unemployed first-class graduates, the House of Representatives, last year, urged the Ministry of Education to liaise with relevant government agencies to ensure their engagement.
But the vice-chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Prof. Adebayo Bamire, said public universities can no longer retain the services of their best students after graduation because they lack the power to do so. “If you retain the best of graduates, it means that year in and out, you will have at least one or two graduates of every department and the issue of excess load will no longer arise. Don’t forget, earned academic allowances have been one of the basic issues cited by the ASUU virtually in all the strikes they had over the years,” he said.
The Pro-Chancellor and Dean of the College of Business, Law and Social Sciences at the University of Derby, United Kingdom, Prof. Kamil Omoteso, recalled that during his time at the University of Lagos, students who graduated with first-class were retained and offered jobs as Graduate Assistants, and they would use the opportunity to build on their profile and determine whether or not to stay in academia.
He said the Federal Government’s interference in the internal affairs of the institutions should have been handled by universities’ Senates and Councils.Before flagging, please keep in mind that Disqus does not moderate communities. Your username will be shown to the moderator, so you should only flag this comment for one of the reasons listed above.
First-Class Graduates OAU UNILAG UNN
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