A university scholar and legal expert, Professor Wasiu Ademola Oyedokun-Alii, has expressed strong reservations about the recently announced 150 cut-off mark for admission into Nigerian universities, describing it as potentially burdensome for lecturers and detrimental to academic standards.
He made this assertion while speaking on Adamimogo FM’s current affairs programme, The Follow Up, on Tuesday.
According to him, universities are more likely to give preference to candidates who score 200 and above, rather than those who barely meet the minimum threshold of 150 noting that such low entry scores could ultimately increase the workload for lecturers, who would have to deal with students struggling to meet the intellectual demands of higher education.
Addressing the broader issues affecting Nigeria’s education sector, the professor who is also a barrister called for the declaration of a state of emergency in education and listed several pressing challenges including inadequate infrastructure, lack of lecture theatres, poor funding, insufficient internally generated revenue (IGR), and unsatisfactory remuneration and welfare packages for academic staff.
He emphasized that Nigerian lecturers deserve significantly better pay, proposing a monthly salary of at least one million naira, considering their pivotal role in training future professionals, including those in highly paid fields like medicine and engineering.
He further advised prospective undergraduates to adopt a culture of deliberate self-development. With access to modern tools such as social media, artificial intelligence, and various technological platforms, Oyedokun-Alii urged the youth to channel these resources toward positive and transformative goals, ultimately contributing to a better society.
