Universities body defends accreditation practices

The executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) of Nigeria, Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, has denied allegations of corrupt practices levied against some staff of the commission during the ongoing course accreditation at Nigerian universities.

Rasheed said at a press conference last month that in the conduct of accreditation “only professors evaluate, score and make recommendations, while NUC staff served as mere secretaries with no powers to influence the outcome”.

The press conference followed allegations published last month that the NUC accreditation process was flawed and that Nigerian universities were deceiving the NUC by inflating staff numbers through the hiring of “mercenaries” from other universities.

Rasheed told the media that to conduct accreditation on any programme, a panel consisting of at least three professors in the relevant subject area and one NUC representative was set up. “The three professors are to evaluate the programme based on set parameters, give their scores, make comments and recommend a status for the programme to the commission,” he said.

He further stated that the process of accreditation entails a peer review process where only professors drawn from the Nigerian university system (not NUC) were always used as panelists and that only one NUC staff member served as secretary and administrative monitor, with no statutory powers to influence the outcome of the accreditation exercise.

According to Rasheed, the panelists and the NUC representative were fully screened by the NUC before embarking on any accreditation trip.

The NUC boss, who also spoke on the reports of over 100 fake professors in the Nigerian universities, confirmed that there were fake professors in the system but could not attach a specific figure to his claims, saying the number could be more or less than 100.

As part of the measures at repositioning our universities, the NUC, through its Strategy Advisory Committee (STRADVCOM), recently verified and published a full directory of professors in the Nigerian university system, he said.

He explained that “it was in the process of validating the submissions that some university senates have in some cases discovered that quite a number of professors are either fake or are yet to mature and some were just readers and not full professors”, he said.

Rasheed also expressed concern over the upsurge of illegal degree awarding institutions, saying the NUC was compiling a comprehensive list of illegal universities and working with the National Youth Service Corps to ensure that graduates of such institutions and other mushrooming universities from neighbouring countries were not mobilised for the one-year mandatory service.

He said the NUC had continued to deliver on its mandate with diligence, especially accreditation of programmes offered by the universities in the country.