The University of Ibadan has been ranked 889th of nearly 19,800 universities worldwide, placing it in the top 4.5 per cent of the world’s universities, and it is the only Nigerian university inside the global top 1,000. It has held 14th place in Africa across successive editions and now stands ahead of several of the continent’s long-established research universities.
Within the current edition alone, its world position improved by 15 places between mid-August and 01 October 2026.
This gladdening news was contained in the latest release of the AD Scientific Index, refreshed on 01 October 2026 and made public by the Chairman of the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee (NiTERAC), Professor Peter A. Okebukola.
He described the ranking as another Triumph for Nigerian Universities as they make impressive gains in the October 2026 AD Scientific Rankings.
According to him, the Executive Summary confirms that Nigerian universities, and the federal universities above all, now occupy a firmer and more visible place in the global research landscape than in any earlier edition.
He stated that Nigeria stands 48th of 221 countries and third in Africa, with 384 institutions and 53,580 scientists indexed, the largest of Africa’s three leading research nations. Within that national total, federal universities form the unmistakable core of the country’s research strength.
He noted that the national presence has also widened markedly: the number of Nigerian universities ranked rose from 257 in the 2024 edition to more than 300 in 2026 and the count of indexed Nigerian scientists continued to climb through 2026.
He said that the strength of the federal system is most vivid at the level of individual scholars. Sixteen of the 22 Nigeria-based scholars in the national top 25 by citations work in federal institutions, five of them at the University of Ibadan, and two federal scholars, Professor Mayowa Owolabi (of the University of Ibadan) and Shafiu Mohammed, stand among the 800 most cited researchers in the world out of more than 2.6 million indexed.
Courtesy: UI DIRECTORATE OF PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
