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This study is concerned with the Planning and Management of academic staff in universities worldwide and in universities in Nigeria in particular. The main purposes of this study were to examine whether there was a general lack of planning for recruitment and appointment of academic staff in Nigerian universities; to confirm whether, in common with other developing countries, there was an over-emphasis on paper qualifications with 'staff development' being regarded as the attainment of higher degrees in Nigerian universities; to see if there was a positive relationship between the quality of infrastructural facilities and the academic staff, and also whether the old and established Federal universities had superiority over the new and State universities in this regard in Nigerian universities; and to investigate the alleged widespread lack of management expertise among the academic and administrative heads in Nigerian universities. This was achieved through analysis of primary and secondary sources, conduct of a survey in five selected universities by means of 9 individually designed questionnaires for the Vice-Chancellors, Registrars, Bursars, Directors of Health, Director of Works, Deans of Faculties, Heads of Departments, and the Academic Staff, additional face-to-face interviews with many officials of government agencies, staff and students unions and other university officials not covered by the questionnaires, and personal observations of the situation in all universities under study. A total of 209 people responded to our questionnaires which represents about 52 per cent response rate from randomly selected total of 402 staff in these universities.
Our findings confirm that there is a general lack of planning for recruitment and appointment of academic staff in Nigerian universities. It also confirmed that there is over-emphasis on paper qualifications and that 'staff development' is perceived as the attainment of higher degrees.
We also found that there is a relationship between the quality of infrastructural facilities and the quality of academic staff, and also that the well-known and premier universities do not have the superiority in infrastructural facilities compared with the new and recently established universities. What is not clear and is difficult to determine is whether all this affects the academic standards or not.
Finally our evidence suggests that there is a widespread lack of management expertise among the academic and non-academic heads in Nigerian universities.
The study recommends the areas in which improvement could be made by the University internal managers and also indicates some directions for further research.
