NUC to transfer 70% power to university senates

The National Universities Commission has unveiled plans to transfer at least 70 per cent of its regulatory powers to determine the curriculum contents of universities across the country to university senates.

According to the Executive Secretary of the Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, with the re-engineering of university education in Nigeria, each University management will be free to establish their course content or curriculum exclusively, while NUC might just contribute 30 per cent from the centre.

He made this known on Tuesday while welcoming the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, who was at NUC to seek a provisional license for the establishment of Sa’adatu Rimi University of Education, Kano.

The NUC boss added that the decision became necessary in order to devolve powers among the universities, noting that it’s not mandatory that a curriculum for education in Kano must be the same for Cross River when individual universities might have their own peculiarities.

Rasheed also maintained that the need to create graduates suited to contemporary jobs necessitated the idea of allowing the Senate of universities to have some leverage in setting their own course content.

He said a directive has gone to all Universities to constitute committees towards actualising this objective.

He criticised those condemning the creation of more universities in Nigeria, saying the goal of the government was to expand access, adding, “There can never be enough universities for a country like Nigeria with awareness of the inherent benefits of tertiary education.

“We have started a gradual devolution of powers regarding who determines what gets taught in the universities. We have found out that because of the emerging circumstances, we should not be the ones determining everything about universities’ curricula.

“We have directed all Universities to constitute committees towards this, we have directed that each department head is in tune with the essence of this policy, because for us the curriculum for teaching education in a university in Maiduguri, doesn’t have to be the same with teaching education in Calabar, so we are looking at devolving about 70 per cent of our powers to the universities while the centre may just contribute about 30 per cent.

“Another strategic goal of the commission is to expand access.

“We need to expand the system by encouraging the public arm to establish more universities and encouraging the private arms also to establish more universities.

“Today in Kano alone we have over six private universities,” he stressed.