By Felix Khanoba
Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has warned universities and other tertiary institutions in the country against manipulating accreditation exercises, declaring that officials who compromise the process could lose their jobs while private institutions risk having their licences revoked.
Alausa issued the warning on Wednesday in Abuja while inaugurating a Ministerial Committee on Strengthening the Accreditation and Quality Assurance System for Tertiary Institutions.
The minister said the government would no longer accept situations where institutions inflate or misrepresent their academic capacity to secure accreditation, insisting that the quality of graduates produced by Nigerian tertiary institutions must correspond with approved standards.
He linked weak accreditation practices to the growing difficulty employers face in recruiting qualified graduates.
“People say they want to hire engineers. They will have 500 candidates, but they won’t be able to get two, three, four or five qualified applicants. That’s the damage we’re doing to this university.
“But guess what? This Ministry of Education is not going to let this continue. Other presidents, other governments may have allowed this to continue, but we are not going to let this continue.
“And at the end of this, there will be consequences. You will go and represent the others, and your institution will lose its standing.
“The world will put the consequences in place. You will lose your job if you don’t act on time. Private institutions will lose their licences,” he said.
Alausa also announced plans to end the practice of institutions borrowing academic staff, equipment and other facilities from elsewhere to create a false impression of capacity during accreditation visits.
The warning comes against the backdrop of the controversy surrounding the accreditation of the Law programme at Atiba University, Oyo State.
In August, the Council of Legal Education imposed a 10-year moratorium on the university’s Law programme over inadequate facilities and the admission and graduation of students without the required approval.
The development has sparked concerns among affected students and parents, who have sought government intervention, including possible transfers to accredited Law faculties to prevent their years of study and financial investments from being lost.
According to Alausa, accreditation must reflect an institution’s actual and sustainable capacity rather than a temporary arrangement put together ahead of an inspection.
“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,” he said.
He said the new measures would target the temporary movement of academic and non-academic personnel between institutions, as well as the practice of presenting borrowed staff during accreditation before returning them to their original institutions.
The same scrutiny, he said, would cover laboratory equipment, workshop resources, library materials and other facilities temporarily moved or borrowed to satisfy accreditation requirements.
Alausa maintained that whatever accreditation teams inspect must represent the institution’s genuine and sustainable capacity.
He said the reform would strengthen the credibility, integrity, transparency, efficiency and sustainability of accreditation across universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
The minister charged the National Universities Commission, National Board for Technical Education and National Commission for Colleges of Education with playing their respective roles in safeguarding the quality of tertiary education.
“An institution should not meet prescribed standards only when the NUC, NBTE or NCCE accreditation team is expected to visit. Those standards should be met every day of the year.
“With a robust digital accreditation platform, much of the institutional information required for accreditation can be continuously maintained and periodically verified.
“Before an accreditation team arrives, the accrediting agency should already have reliable information on institutional staffing, facilities, laboratories, workshops and other equipment.
“The physical visit will remain important, but it should increasingly serve to validate verified data rather than begin the verification process from scratch,” he said.
Alausa stressed that the committee was established not to weaken the existing accreditation framework but to modernise it and make the process more transparent, evidence-based and resistant to manipulation.
He directed the committee to develop mechanisms for verifying the authenticity and continuous availability of academic and non-academic staff presented for accreditation.
It is also expected to establish systems for confirming the ownership, functionality, adequacy, accessibility and sustained availability of facilities and equipment presented by institutions.
The minister said technology would be deployed to transform accreditation from a largely manual and periodic exercise into a digital, data-driven and continuously verifiable process.
He specifically advocated the deployment of geospatial mapping, geotagging and appropriate digital identification technologies for infrastructure, laboratories, workshops and major equipment.
“Critical equipment presented for accreditation should be capable of being digitally identified and linked to a specific institution and physical location,” he said.
Alausa further proposed a comprehensive digital identity and staff verification framework to establish the presence and institutional affiliation of personnel presented during accreditation exercises.
He said the proposed framework, subject to applicable laws and data protection requirements, could leverage national identity infrastructure and interoperable government databases.
The minister said collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission should be explored to utilise the National Identification Number, alongside the appropriate use of Bank Verification Number infrastructure and other secure technologies.
He said the system would help enforce the principle of “one individual, one verifiable identity and an accurately declared institutional affiliation”, while exposing instances where an individual is improperly presented as full-time staff in multiple institutions.
Alausa also raised concern over illegal admissions into tertiary institutions, saying the number had reached hundreds of thousands.
He attributed part of the problem to the tolerance of irregularities under previous administrations, but assured Nigerians that the President Bola Tinubu administration would not allow the practice to continue.
Responding, the Chairman of the Ministerial Committee and former Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, pledged that the committee would tackle abuses associated with accreditation.
Oloyede said institutions should not be allowed to prepare temporarily for accreditation visits, stressing that continuous monitoring was necessary to ensure that approved standards were maintained throughout the year.
He said the committee would also examine ways regulatory and professional bodies could better harmonise their accreditation processes and agree on relevant criteria to prevent cases where students complete programmes only to discover that they cannot proceed to professional training or registration.
Earlier, the Director of Polytechnic Education in the ministry, Mrs Kalau Igwe, said the committee’s inauguration reflected the government’s determination to establish a stronger, more transparent and integrity-driven accreditation system.
Igwe said the practice of borrowing or temporarily moving staff, equipment and facilities for accreditation was not peculiar to universities, noting that similar practices occurred in other categories of tertiary institutions.
She expressed optimism that the committee would produce reforms capable of improving educational quality while protecting the interests of Nigerian students.
The committee is expected to review existing accreditation policies, standards, guidelines, procedures and operational practices across the tertiary education regulatory framework.
It will also identify loopholes and challenges undermining accreditation, strengthen staff and resource verification, and improve the independence and accountability of accreditation panels.
