The Federal Government has banned tertiary institutions from presenting borrowed lecturers, equipment, laboratories and other facilities to accreditation teams, insisting that universities, polytechnics and colleges of education must be assessed strictly on resources they genuinely own and can sustainably provide.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, disclosed this in Abuja during the inauguration of the Ministerial Committee on Strengthening the Accreditation and Quality Assurance System for Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria.
Alausa said the government was seeking to transform accreditation from a periodic exercise into a continuous, digital and data-driven quality assurance system capable of verifying the actual capacity of institutions.
The minister said the government was set to overhaul the accreditation system to prevent institutions from creating a “temporary picture” of their capacity whenever accreditation teams visit, a practice he said was rife across the sector.
The reform follows recent controversy surrounding Atiba University in Oyo State, where the Council of Legal Education imposed a 10-year moratorium on its law faculty over inadequate facilities and unauthorized admissions, leaving dozens of students stranded.
Alausa warned that institutions caught flouting the new rules would face serious consequences, including loss of accreditation standing and possible job losses for those responsible.
To enforce the new regime, the government plans to deploy technology-driven verification tools rather than relying solely on manual inspections.
This includes collaborating with the National Identity Management Commission to link academic staff to their National Identification Number and Bank Verification Number, establishing a “one individual, one primary institution” rule to stop staff being listed as full-time personnel at multiple schools.
The government also intends to deploy geospatial mapping and digital tags on physical structures, laboratories, workshops and high-value equipment so they cannot be moved between campuses for inspection visits, while regulatory bodies such as the National Universities Commission, National Board for Technical Education and National Commission for Colleges of Education transition to digital platforms that pre-verify data before physical visits.
