Inalegwu Shaibu
5 November 2007
THE National Universities Commission (NUC) weekend disclosed that there are more than 331 unapproved programmes in the Nigerian university system just as it said that an alarming 1.096, 312 million students are hold up in 91 universities across the nation with decaying infrastructures.
NUC said no nation can develop by running a university system where 331 programmes out of 2605, in 13 discplines are unapproved.
The executive secretary of NUC, Professor Julius Okogie who gave the discouraging report in Abuja at a press briefing on the state of Nigerian universities said the non-compliance to regulations such as surpassing carrying capacity and running of unapproved programmes by universities has become the greatest problem facing university education in Nigeria.
Okogie said the standard of university education has dropped considerably in recent times because more students graduate from unapproved programmes than the approved ones, adding that, the lecturers themselves are mostly incompetent to handle courses assigned to them.
He said, "Over one million candidates scramble for just about 200, 000 spaces available annually for admission into the universities. In the face of inadequate and obsolete infrastructures and equipment, poor library facilities, inadequate academic staff in number and quality, lack of relevance of academic programmes, low level funding, cultism, unstable university calendar, particularly in unionized federal and state universities, most universities still go beyond the carrying capacity allotted to them.
"Imagine a university in the south west with about 81, 000 students. You cannot get quality learning from such university. Benson Idahosa University for instance is running an unapproved law programme up to 500 levels, what will become of the students when they graduate?
" Lagos State University alone operates nine external campuses in which 211 unapproved programmes are run. Some institutions for no justifiable reason established and ran illegal satellite campuses with connivance of the leadership of conventional universities with a view to awarding degree certificates to unsuspecting and gullible Nigerians".
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