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A new report by the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, a research institute, has revealed how financial secrecy in Nigerian universities affects their ability to access global research funding.
The report, which surveyed 64 Nigerian universities, is titled, “A National Embarrassment: Reforming Transparency in Nigerian Universities to Unlock Global Funding and Restore Credibility.”
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It noted that Nigerian universities rank among the least transparent in the world, with none of the surveyed institutions making their financial records publicly available.
The report added that formal requests for financial information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act were ignored by the majority of the federal universities surveyed.
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“State and private universities proved even more inaccessible, often citing ‘lack of authorisation’ as a blanket reason for withholding information,” the report stated.
Financial secrecy
The report described the prevalence of financial secrecy among the institutions as a fundamental governance weakness that systematically excludes these institutions from the global research funding ecosystem and diminishes their international credibility.
It noted that the culture of secrecy reinforces external perceptions that Nigerian universities are high-risk partners that are unprepared to manage international grants or major research funding.
The report said: “Without significant investment in governance reform, capacity building, and the modernisation of financial reporting systems, Nigerian universities will remain trapped in a cycle of financial opacity, limited external funding, and declining global relevance.
“Addressing these transparency deficits is essential for unlocking new sources of research funding and restoring public trust in the governance and integrity of Nigeria’s higher education sector.”
Speaking at the launch of the report recently, the Chancellor of the Athena Centre, Osita Chidoka, said financial transparency in the universities is key to unlocking funding, restoring trust, and positioning Nigerian universities as credible players on the global stage.
Mr Chidoka, a former Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Management stressed that this culture of secrecy is driving away donors, blocking global partnerships, and starving our universities of much-needed funding.
“Global research consistently shows that transparent universities secure more research grants, partnerships, and international student enrollments,” he said.
“Universities should be role models of openness, accountability, and innovation, not fortresses of secrecy.”
Methodology
For this report, the Athena Centre report surveyed 64 universities across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, comprising 30 federal universities, 18 state universities, and 16 private universities.
It said the universities were selected equally across the zones except for the private universities where three institutions were selected from each zone and one from the Northeast due to the relatively low number of private universities in the region.
The centre wrote formal requests for financial reports and interview requests to all of the universities and followed up with phone calls to the institutions.
More Findings
While nine universities provided partial financial statements, over 80 per cent of the universities fail to disclose even partial financial data or grant utilisation statements through formal responses.
However, none of the universities provided full breakdowns of revenues and expenditures of internally generated revenue (IGR) despite heavy dependence on such funds.
When compared with their peers in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, Nigerian universities performed poorly on transparency, the report noted.
It explained that the University of Cape Town, South Africa; the University of Nairobi, Kenya; and the University of Ghana provide real-time access to budget allocations, audited financial statements, and granular expenditure reports, “helping them attract millions in private sector funding and international research grants.”
Recommendations
The report recommended legislative, internal and structural reforms.
It advocated for a University Transparency and Accountability Act that would mandate all universities —federal, state and private– to publish audited financial statements, budgets, and grant utilisation reports, with compliance tied directly to accreditation and funding eligibility.
It suggested that the publication of financial data be tied to eligibility for government funding, accreditation renewal, and eligibility for participation in state or federal intervention programs such as TETFund.
“Universities that fail to comply should face sanctions, including suspension from competitive research grant programs and reduced government subventions,” it said.
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It recommended the establishment of a Central University Transparency Portal (UTAP), a public platform where all universities must upload “annual audited financial statements, procurement processes and contract awards, comprehensive breakdowns of internally generated revenue (IGR), grant utilisation reports, and annual performance scorecards tracking progress on visitation panel recommendations.”
The report also recommended the expansion of the Auditor-General of the Federation’s audits of public universities, noting that previous reviews have focused narrowly on minor financial infractions while missing the broader structural and process failures that lie at the heart of Nigeria’s university governance crisis.
“Rather than issuing audit reports that focus on technical bookkeeping errors, the Auditor-General should produce governance risk assessments for each audited university, highlighting systemic weaknesses in transparency, accountability, and institutional governance —and recommending corrective actions,” it said.
