A former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Peter Okebukola, has identified parochialism as one of the reasons why Nigerian universities lag behind in global rankings.
Okebukola said this on Tuesday in a paper, 'Entrenching a culture of quality assurance at the University of Ibadan' delivered at a one-day seminar on quality assurance for principal officers of the UI in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
He said the simplest of the criteria to know a world-class university was the presence of foreigners in the staff roll call, has been eroded through parochialism in Nigeria.
"Not only that you don't find foreigners teaching in Nigerian universities now as of old, the whole thing is bastardised to the extent that you can only find people from the Western part of the country in the University of Ibadan, the Hausas at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; and the Igbo people at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, this is a wrong signal," he said.
By Olalekan Adetayo