Dr Tunji Alausa
The Federal Government has announced plans to end the widespread practice where tertiary institutions temporarily borrow staff, equipment, and facilities to fake compliance during accreditation visits.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja during the inauguration of the Ministerial Committee on Strengthening the Accreditation and Quality Assurance System for Tertiary Institutions.
The reform follows recent controversy surrounding Atiba University in Oyo State, where the Council of Legal Education (CLE) imposed a 10-year moratorium on its Law faculty over inadequate facilities and unauthorized admissions, leaving dozens of students stranded.
“An institution should not be able to prepare a temporary picture of itself simply for the purpose of an accreditation visit. Sadly, this is what persists in the majority of instances,” Alausa said. “Those standards should be met every day of the year.”
To curb these practices across universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, the ministry is introducing a digital, data-driven system to track institutional resources continuously. Key measures outline:
Staff Identification: Collaborating with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to link academic staff to their National Identification Number (NIN) and Bank Verification Number (BVN). This framework will establish a “one individual, one primary institution” rule to prevent staff from being listed as full-time personnel at multiple schools.
Geotagging Infrastructure: Deploying geospatial mapping and digital tags on physical structures, laboratories, workshops, and high-value equipment so they cannot be moved between campuses for inspection visits.
Digital Verification: Transitioning regulatory bodies, including the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), and National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), from manual inspections to digital platforms where data is pre-verified before physical visits.
The minister also addressed the issue of illegal admissions, noting that unauthorized enrollments across tertiary institutions run into the hundreds of thousands due to lax oversight by previous administrations.
Chaired by Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, former Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), the newly inaugurated committee has been tasked with reviewing current accreditation policies, closing operational loopholes, and aligning regulatory standards with professional bodies.
Oloyede pledged the committee’s commitment to eliminating accreditation fraud, emphasizing that continuous monitoring is essential to ensure institutions maintain required standards permanently. (NAN)
