By Felix Khanoba
The National Universities Commission (NUC) says six universities are exempted from the visitation teams recently constituted by the Federal Government to look into the affairs of the institutions.
The Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, disclosed this while briefing the quality assurance committee of NUC in Abuja.
He explained that all federal universities and Inter-University Centres would receive a visitation team each except those universities created less than five years ago: the Maritime University, Okerenkoko, the Army University, Biu and the Federal University of Health Sciences, Otukpo as they were not due for such visitation.
Others exempted from the exercise according to the NUC boss are the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna, Airforce Institute of Technology (AFIT), Kaduna and the Police Academy, Wudil, Kano.
This is contained in a statement made available to The AUTHORITY in Abuja and signed by Ibrahim Yakasai, Director, Corporate Affairs, NUC.
According to the statement, Prof. Rasheed said the Visitation Panels to 38 federal universities and four Inter-University Centres recently approved by the President Muhammadu Buhari, would be gazetted to enable the exercise to be carried out.
He said that the federal ministry of education was working with the justice ministry to ensure that the gazetting was done expeditiously.
Speaking further, the NUC boss said that as soon as the gazetting was done, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, would inaugurate the panels after which they would proceed to their respective universities for the assignments.
Prof. Rasheed also said that the audit would cover a period of ten years for all the universities to be visited except for the federal universities in Birnin Kebbi, Gashua and Gusau whose audit would cover only five years as they were created less than ten years ago.
Their report would cover the period 2013 to 2017. “For the ten year period each visitation panel is to produce two separate reports of five years each covering January 2011 to December 2015 and January 2016 to December 2020”, he said.
According to Prof. Rasheed, the Chairmen of the Panels were drawn from some of the best retired Public servants including a former Chief of Army Staff, six former Heads of Service of the Federation; former federal permanent secretaries; former vice chancellors; and Professors Emeriti, amongst several others.
He said that membership of Panels was largely drawn from serving and retired academics and non-academics, retired public servants, professionals and the military, adding that “each Panel will have an accountant, a lawyer, an architect and or an engineer; an experienced professor and an experienced university administrator who would either be a former registrar, a former bursar or others.
