Sowore slams Buhari over praise of ABUAD ranking, laments worsening conditions of public varsities

Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), has criticized President Muhammadu Buhari for celebrating the recent rankings of the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State.

The university was recently ranked as the best in Nigeria and 400th in the world by Times Higher Education World Rankings.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in a congratulatory message on Monday, noted that the ranking analysed more than 108 million citations across more than 14.4 million research publications in arriving at ABUAD’s placement.

He added that this included responses from about 22,000 scholars, showing the depth, acceptability and influence of ABUAD’s placement as the best out of 197 universities in Nigeria and one of 400 out of 31,097 universities in the world.

Read also:Sowore brands Buhari’s govt despicable, as ASUU, COEASU strikes linger

Reacting via a tweet on his verified Twitter handle on Tuesday, Sowore slammed the President for adulating private university while public ones were abandoned.

He lamented the worsening conditions of public universities in Nigeria, stressing that none of them had met international standards since Buhari’s emergence as the President.

The tweet read: “The comment made by the President is one of the most gut-wrenching statements you could read from the president of any country. President Muhammadu Buhari is praising a private university owned by an individual while Nigerian universities are on strike and none had attained any global standards since his coming to power.”

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