Matriculating students at Federal University Lokoja's Adankolo Campus on April 10, 2018 | File Photo
No Nigerian university is listed in the top 100 of the QS World University Rankings for 2026.
The Quacquarelli Symonds, QS, released its ranking of world universities on June 19, 2025.
The rankings are based on several metrics, including academic and employer reputation, faculty, research citation counts, international student diversity, international research network, employment outcomes, and sustainability.
But as was the case in 2024 for its 2025 listing and in 2023 for 2024, no Nigerian tertiary institution appeared in the 2026 top 1000.
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Of the 297 universities currently operating in Nigeria, only three were listed in the 2026 ranking, with none making it into the global top 1,000.
The universities listed are the University of Ibadan (UI), the University of Lagos (UNILAG), and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
UI and UNILAG were both ranked in the 1001-1200 band for both 2025 and 2026.
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ABU, however, was placed in the 1201-1400 band for the 2026 rankings, with no available data for 2025.
The 2026 QS World University Rankings featured 1,501 institutions from 106 locations worldwide.
Am analysis reveals that across Africa, Egypt led with 20 universities on the list, followed by South Africa with 11, and Tunisia with four.
Ghana and Morocco each had two universities, while Kenya, Libya, Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia each had one.
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Notably, the only two African universities to make it into the top 300 in the 2026 rankings are both from South Africa.
They include the University of Cape Town, ranked 150th, and the University of Witwatersrand, ranked 291st.
Below are the universities listed in the QS’s global top 10:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US
- Imperial College London, UK
- Stanford University, US
- University of Oxford, UK
- Harvard University, US
- University of Cambridge, UK
- ETH Zurich, Switzerland
- National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
- University College London (UCL), UK
- California Institute of Technology (Caltech), US
In recent years, Nigerian universities like the UI and UNILAG have consistently appeared in ranking bands of 1001-1200 or lower.
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