Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, Prof. Julius Okojie
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The National Universities Commission has dissociated itself from a purported 2013 ranking of Nigerian universities making rounds on the Internet.
Some faceless scammers had released the 2013 result of the supposedly NUC ranking of universities and uploaded same on the internet.
But the NUC, in a statement, said the list did not emanate from the supervisory agency of the nation’s university system.
The commission, therefore, dissociated itself from the ranking.
The statement reads, “The attention of the NUC has been drawn to some purported lists, making the rounds on the internet, of the ‘Top 100’ and ‘Top 50’ universities in Nigeria, which were alleged to be the outcome of a non-existing ‘annual university rankings’ by the National University Commission (sic).
“It has to be stated, unequivocally, that the lists did not emanate from the NUC. The Commission therefore totally dissociates itself from them.”
The NUC restated that its mandate includes approval of courses and programmes; determination and maintenance of Minimum Academic Standards; monitoring of universities; accreditation of academic programmes and institutions; as well as provision of guidelines and processing of applications for the establishment of private universities.
The NUC added that the first ranking of Nigerian universities done by the agency in 2002 was based on the performance of the universities’ academic programmes in the 1999 and 2000 accreditation exercises.
The 2004 ranking, it stated, was based on percentage of academic programmes of the university with full accreditation status; compliance with carrying capacity; proportion of the academic staff of the university at professorial level; foreign content in workforce and students; and faculty members with outstanding academic achievements.
It stated that the NUC also looked at research output; student completion rate; Ph.D graduate output for the year; stability of university calendar; and student-to-computer ratio.
The results of the exercise, the NUC added, were duly published and that the same would be done for future exercises.
The commission added that though it had started the accreditation of universities since 1990, it considered the institutional accreditation in May 2006 to complement programme accreditation.
“Following wide consultations, the instruments for this exercise were designed and pilot-tested in six universities in 2010. The instruments were fine-tuned, based on the findings of the pilot exercise and NUC was ready for the full-blown institutional accreditation, which took off on 27 November, 2011.
“A total of 26 universities were selected, based on the fact that at least 70 per cent of all their programmes had full accreditation.”
The above, the NUC stated, “is the build-up to the next ranking exercise by the NUC, which outcome will be made public.
“Stakeholders in the university education sub-sector and the general public are therefore advised to ignore the spurious lists of ‘Top 100” and ‘Top 50” universities being peddled by those who appear bent on causing disaffection in the Nigerian University System,” the statement added.
