Nigeria, March 7 -- 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."

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 universitie...