UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN RETAINS NIGERIA’S TOP RESEARCH UNIVERSITY SPOT – AD SCIENTIFIC INDEX

The University of Ibadan has retained its position as Nigeria’s top research university, while federal institutions continued to dominate the country’s leading positions in the latest AD Scientific Index.

This was contained in a statement signed on Friday by the Chairman of the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee, Emeritus Prof. Peter Okebukola.

The AD Scientific Index, updated on October 1, 2026, placed Nigeria 48th out of 221 countries globally and third in Africa. The ranking covered 384 Nigerian institutions and 53,580 indexed researchers.

The report showed that at least eight of Nigeria’s top 10 universities are federal institutions, with the University of Ibadan retaining the number one position nationally.

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Globally, UI ranked 889th among nearly 19,800 universities, placing it within the top 4.5 per cent worldwide and making it the only Nigerian university in the global top 1,000.

The university also retained its 14th position in Africa, while improving from 904th globally in mid-August to 889th in the October 1 update.

“The University of Ibadan remains the flagship,” the report stated, noting that the institution had maintained the top national position across recent editions of the AD Scientific Index.

UI has 1,586 indexed scholars, five of whom were listed among Nigeria’s 25 most-cited researchers.

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka, retained second place nationally, while the University of Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Ilorin, Ahmadu Bello University, Nnamdi Azikiwe University and Bayero University also featured among the country’s leading institutions.

“Of the ten national top places in the 2027 edition, at least eight are held by federal institutions,” the report stated.

It noted that the universities were spread across different regions of Nigeria, indicating that research strength within the federal university system was becoming more widely distributed rather than being concentrated among a few older institutions.

The report also highlighted the performance of individual Nigerian academics, noting that 16 of the 22 Nigeria-based researchers listed among the national top 25 by citations are affiliated with federal universities.

Five of the researchers are from the University of Ibadan, while Ahmadu Bello University, the University of Nigeria and Obafemi Awolowo University each have two scholars on the list.

Mayowa Owolabi of the University of Ibadan emerged as Nigeria’s most-cited researcher, with 257,748 citations, ranking 676th globally among more than 2.6 million indexed researchers.

Shafiu Mohammed of Ahmadu Bello University followed with 242,300 citations and a global ranking of 776th, while Olayinka Ilesanmi of the University of Ibadan ranked third nationally with 185,602 citations.

The report noted that Owolabi and Mohammed were among the 800 most-cited researchers worldwide.

Nigeria’s research profile expands

The report said Nigeria’s research presence had grown significantly over recent editions of the AD Scientific Index.

It noted that the number of Nigerian universities included in the ranking rose from 257 in the 2024 edition to more than 300 in 2026. The number of indexed Nigerian researchers also increased from 53,214 in November 2025 to 53,580 by October 2026.

Nigeria now has more indexed researchers than South Africa and Egypt, although they are distributed across a larger number of institutions.

The report put Nigeria’s average at about 140 indexed researchers per institution, compared with 267 in South Africa and 387 in Egypt.

It therefore called for greater emphasis on research quality and impact at the country’s leading universities.

“The task ahead is therefore less about breadth, where Nigeria already leads Africa, and more about deepening research concentration at its strongest universities,” the report stated.

The institutional rankings were based on researchers’ publicly available academic records, particularly Google Scholar profiles. The AD Scientific Index assesses researchers using metrics including the H-index, i10-index and total citations.

However, the report cautioned that the rankings should be interpreted carefully because the index is continuously updated and its global coverage has expanded considerably.

THE ranking also records gains

The AD Scientific Index findings came shortly after the release of the 2027 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, which also recorded an increase in Nigeria’s representation.

THE ranked 29 Nigerian universities in its 2027 edition, compared with 24 institutions in 2026.

Of the 29 universities, 19 were federal institutions, while seven were state-owned and three were privately owned.

The University of Ibadan and University of Lagos retained positions in the 801–1000 global band, while Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Ilorin moved into the 1001–1200 band.

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Obafemi Awolowo University and the University of Benin also moved into the 1401–1600 band.

The latest rankings come as the Federal Government works on a national framework for assessing tertiary institutions across the country.

The Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee, chaired by Okebukola, is developing a national ranking system expected to assess universities, polytechnics and colleges of education using multiple performance indicators.

The AD report recommended that Nigerian universities regularly verify their researchers’ Google Scholar profiles, strengthen doctoral training, support highly cited research groups and expand international research collaborations.

It also advised NiTERAC to preserve annual ranking data to enable more reliable comparisons of institutional performance over time.

The report urged Nigerian universities to study institutions that have successfully improved their research visibility and to consider multiple ranking systems when evaluating performance.

“The message from the AD Scientific Index is therefore not one of arrival, but unmistakably one of forward movement,” it stated.

It added that Nigeria still needed to improve citation impact, research output per academic staff, international collaboration and the representation of Nigerian researchers among the world’s highly cited scholars.

The report concluded that the gains recorded by federal universities provided a foundation for further improvement but stressed the need for progress to extend across the wider Nigerian university system.