It’s not surprising ABU ranked best in research
By Auwalu Umar
Ahmadu Bello University had never submitted itself for any ranking until this time around when it did so recently for the World University Rankings 2025. The institution had to yield to the reality of prevailing global practice in order to retain its good name as one of the leading universities in Nigeria and beyond. The North’s premier University must submit itself for the global scrutiny, at least, for the obvious benefits: brand and visibility, collaboration and partnership, increased funding, recruitment, as well as organisational management and strategy.
The Times Higher Education (THE), which is the most robust and highly reputed ranking body in the world, had last week released the World University Rankings 2025 with Ahmadu Bello University, a public institution, ranked at 1001-1200. It ranked second at the national level after Covenant University, a private institution of higher learning. Most importantly, research quality is the highest ranked pillar of the university as shown in the institution’s performance across metrices and the corresponding pillars.
Participation for the ranking is usually through the Times Higher Education (THE) by submitting some basic data of the participating university, the SCOPUS ID of the institution. The rankings are generated from five pillars each of which represents a key area of higher education excellence, namely: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and national outlook.
The strongest pillar of Ahmadu Bello University is the research output which is measured using four metrices viz: citation impact, research strength, research excellence, and research influence. For example, the citation impact is examined by capturing the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by a scholar globally as obtainable in SCOPUS. Research strength calculates the 75th percentile of field-weighted citation impact while research excellence looks at the number of research publications in the top 10 percent for field-weighted citation impact worldwide. And research influence helps to understand when research is recognised in turn by the most influential research in the world.
Be that as it may, it is not for nothing that the university had achieved the enviable feat in research quality as released by THE in the World University Rankings 2025. This is largely due to a number of mechanisms developed by the University to ensure quality research. These include internal monitoring and evaluations of grants, training and internal workshops at Faculty and University levels, continuous and timely dissemination of research related information to staff, as well as external trainings for staff to benefit. Remarkably, agriculture, AI/engineering, and bio-medical sciences remain the institution’s strength in research fields.
Ahmadu Bello University was founded with a clear vision to be a world class centre of learning and research that is responsive to the needs of its immediate community, Nigeria and the world at large. Its mission is to, among others “advance the frontiers of learning and break new grounds through teaching, research and the dissemination of knowledge of the highest quality”. It is also to “produce high-level human power and enhance capacity-building through training and retraining in order to meet the needs and challenges of the catchment area, Nigeria and the rest of the world”.
True to its ideals, as envisioned by its founding father Sir Ahmadu Bello, the University has continued to grow in leaps and bounds in promoting research and the advancement of science and technology. The institution is gradually achieving its goal of being a leader in cutting-edge research through the provision of ultra-modern multi-user specialised laboratories and information resources.
In practical term, the University had last year upgraded its research and innovation unit to a fully-pledged directorate to provide direction, organisation and management of research and innovation related activities within the institution, as research output and research impact make up to 60 percent of the total scores in Times Higher Education (THE) ranking criteria for universities. It was also an account of the critical role that research plays in the development of any society, and essentially in view of the fact that research has continued to exert increasing importance in the assessment of ranking and competitiveness of universities at the global scale.
The Senate of the University had also approved a new draft policy on intellectual property (IP) for the institution, as the old policy was inadequate to address the present day complexities to guide IP administrators as the old policy was not prepared in line with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) guidelines. Besides covering legal issues associated with the intellectual property administration, the policy also encourages problem solving investigations by researchers with special emphasis on the reward mechanism for proceeds of commercialisation. It further proposes royalty sharing formula that gives the investors more royalties from their efforts. The University, according to the policy, has legal ownership of IPs even though the inventors have the largest share.
Since the establishment of the directorate in February last year, a series of activities had been carried out in area of training on grantsmanship, publications, research for innovation, university ranking and mentorship for staff and postgraduate students across the university. The directorate also facilitated the successful registration of six new patents in Germany while another six staff of the University had made the most recent list of top two percent scientists in the world as analysed by the Standard University and Elsevier.
Expectedly, there has been a steady rise in the number and value of research grants won by the University in addition to the several other innovation-related activities, all of which need to be managed efficiently and effectively. The University also gained recognition at both national and international levels for its excellence in research as top five academics from the University made the list of the recently reconstituted TETFund National Research Fund Screening and Monitoring Committee by the Federal Government.
• Umar is the Director, Public Affairs Directorate, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
