60% varsity lecturers are without doctorate degrees–Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan has said that 60 per cent of the lecturers in Nigerian universities do not have doctorate (PhD) degrees.
The President stated this in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, while interacting with 100 beneficiaries of the state’s scholarship programme on Tuesday.
President Jonathan, a PhD holder in Zoology lamented the situation saying “about 60 per cent of lecturers don’t have PhDs and we reject it.”
To address the anomaly, he declared that the federal government has provided respite for the lecturers by working out a scholarship programme to encourage lecturers get their doctorate degrees abroad.
“We decided to come up with a programme for you (lecturers). To be in the academics, you must have PhD….Everybody who is in the academics must have an opportunity to go and do their doctorate degrees anywhere. ”
This means that we must work out a programme for everybody to have scholarship” he stated.
Former Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili initiated a policy during the Obasanjo regime, to make it mandatory for every lecturer in the nation’s tertiary institutions possess a PhD degree before being able to lecture. But the policy was jettisoned by the Yar’Adua administration on assumption of power in 2007.
The president further explained that his administration had designed another scholarship programme for a category of people he referred to as ‘intelligent Nigerians’, who possess first class degrees.


“In addition to giving every lecturer an opportunity to get a PhD and lecture, we need a programme for intelligent Nigerians. We are trying to get a crop of Nigerians that will take us to the moon” President Jonathan stated.
The special scheme was designed for specific disciplines such as molecular biology, genetics, economics, engineering and applied sciences.
“To select this group of people; first and foremost you must make first class in the university.”
He however noted that one  does not need to make a first class to be a lecturer.