The founder of Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), has called on the federal government to stop licensing more universities without adequate plans for monitoring their standards.
He also charged the National Universities Commission (NUC) to overhaul the university licensing process to ensure the highest standard.
Babalola made the call while delivering his address at the High Impact Research and Journal Advancement Workshop organised by the ABUAD Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy, held at the institution’s campus in Ado-Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State, on Monday.
Babalola commended Prof. Peter Okebukola, who was the keynote speaker at the event, for redefining excellence in national service during his time as Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC).
“Not only was the visitation and accreditation process rigorous, it was also impossible to obtain approval to commence professional degrees such as medicine, engineering and law in the first few years of establishing a university.
“But what do we have today? The mass approval of mushroom and substandard universities with some lacking even the basic learning facilities and infrastructure. His strict compliance with the law and rules has been brushed aside now.
“As a result of the “anything goes” approach to university licensing and accreditation, NUC’s ability to ensure quality control and to stamp out substandard institutions appears to have been seriously compromised. We currently have over 270 universities in Nigeria, and proposals for the approval of another 200 new institutions are currently under consideration by the National Assembly.
“The focus now seems to be on quantity, not quality, licensing more universities without adequate plans for monitoring their standards. The end result is a rapid decline and rot of our educational system and in the quality of our graduates. What we need is quality education. Poor education is worse than illiteracy.
“We cannot seriously speak of advancing sustainable development through high-impact research unless we address this menace of the proliferation of substandard universities in our nation.
“Most public institutions owe teachers’ salary. How can such universities acquire the latest equipment for 21st-century education?
“If we are really serious about accelerating national development through research, the starting point will be for the NUC to return to the era of placing quality over quantity.
“What we expect is for the NUC to completely overhaul the university licensing process to ensure the highest standard and to also take immediate steps to close those mushroom universities, many of which are illegal and are operating without the permission of NUC.
“The government and the National Universities Commission are not bothered about the large numbers of illegal universities recently put at 58 by NUC.
“As a university built on the foundation of reforming higher education in Nigeria, our goal at ABUAD is to maintain our focus on highest quality research and education.”
In his keynote address, Prof. Peter Okebukola, spoke on a lecture, titled, Promoting High-Impact Research Publications For Sustainable National Development in Nigeria: Opportunities Challenges and Future Directios’ where he identified the challenges to achieving High-Impact Research Publications to include, “Infrastructure Deficits: Inadequate research facilities, unreliable internet access, and power shortages hinder data collection, analysis, and dissemination processes.
