News Update

NEWS:
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• The Jigawa State Police Commissioner, Usman Tilli, has been accused of pocketing allowances meant for fighting Boko Haram terrorists.
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• The University of ABUJA has expressed its willingness to partner with any potential investor in the establishment of indigenous fermentation industry.

• The Senate President Bukola Saraki has said that the ministerial list envelope will remain sealed and will be opened before the plenary on Tuesday.‎
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• Over 250+ Golfers Compete At The Independence Day Golf Competition 2015 http://t.co/z7vkhNxior
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• The Story Of Queen Of Aso 2015 Beauty Pageant http://t.co/pJ2MK7XPJF‎
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• Suicide Bombers Carry Out Multiple Attacks In Maiduguri, Borno State: http://grt.me/oWyoa
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• Flights Disrupted After Electricity Firm Disconnects ABUJA Airport: http://grt.me/GFNN3
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• The New Set Of Terrorists In ABUJA And How They Destroy The City. Read About Them: http://t.co/nOX8lL49B3‎
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• “FCT Residents Deserve To Have A Representative In Buhari’s Administration”: http://grt.me/gQsvJ

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EU Delegation Seeks Collaboration with NUC

The Executive Secretary, NUC, Professor Julius A. Okojie explaining a point as the Deputy Head of European Union Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Mr. Richard Young, when his  team visited the Commission

A team, led by the Deputy Head of the European Union (EU), Delegation to Nigeria and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Mr. Richard Young, on Wednesday, 23 September, 2015, visited the National Universities Commission (NUC) to seek collaboration between Nigerian Higher Education Institutions and their European counterparts on two major issues bordering on Erasmus Course Programmes and recognition of qualifications earned in universities within the regions. Receiving the delegation, the Executive Secretary of the Commission, Professor Julius A. Okojie, OON, expressed delight about the resolve of the team to take th time out of the 7 Quality Assurance Conference holding in Nigeria, to solicit for exchange of ideas on the two issues. He briefed them on the functions and roles of NUC, the history of the Nigerian University System (NUS), especially since the commencement of regional universities; from the initial small number to the present structure of 141, comprising 40 each for Federal and State Governments as well as 61 private universities. Professor Okojie said that with the increase in the number of universities, NUC's role of ensuring the orderly development of the NUS had continued to be challenging. He stated that private universities in the country had peculiar governance structure as they ran their affairs through their Boards of Trustees (BoT), which in turn appoint the Governing Councils while the Council appoint the Vice

NUC Management with the delegation, during the courtesy visit

Chancellors and other Principal Officers. He emphasised that the Commission had been working since the last three decades to maintain balance between granting access, guaranteeing quality and stabilising the system. Professor Okojie stated that the exchange programme was a welcome development, adding that some Nigerian students really needed to go abroad to study, particularly for courses that the universities lacked the required resources and manpower to train students such as Aeronautic Engineering. He told the team that the NUS would also benefit immensely from the Erasmus Course Programme as only about 40 percent of the teaching personnel had PhDs. It would therefore complement the present capacity building of the staff undertaken by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). The Commission, he said, had continued to work hard, over the years to maintain a balance between granting access, guaranteeing quality and stabilizing the system. On the recognition of qualifications, Professor Okojie said that there must be common minimum entry requirements that would be stipulated for nationals of a country studying, either in their home universities or abroad. He stressed that what was required in the West African sub-region was to strengthen the national accreditation bodies and establish integrity in the process, through robust accreditation of programmes and institutions at their individual levels before going into regional affiliations. He affirmed that Nigerian universities ran a two semester system and were doing well, in terms of the quality of graduates and institutions and certainly served as a model for the sub-region. He stated that one of the challenges inherent in the NUS was that of the grading system which the NUC was currently reviewing in collaboration with the universities, with the hope of scrapping the pass degree and adopting a uniform grading that would represent common measuring indices for all graduates in the country. Responding to other issues, the Executive Secretary noted that the exchange of staff and students was a welcome idea but that it would only take place where the Commission had confidence in the universities in question. He also faulted the idea of the EU delegation meeting with the officials of theForeign Affairs Ministry alone, saying that it should have consulted with the NUC right from the outset since the matter was about university education. In his speech, Mr. Young said that the issue of recognition of qualifications was one that needed cooperation between the EU Council and the NUC, as it would offer them mutually-benefitting rewards. While calling for its exploration, he noted that migration was a challenging issue which EU universities had been working with Immigration authorities in Nigeria to tackle. This, according to him, had been categorised into legal and regular migration, irregular migration and international defections, for Nigerians that had been looking for the recognition of their qualifications either for academic or professional purposes. On quality assurance in EU universities, the team leader said that the European Union Council was responsible for doing so and had a register that listed all recognised institutions within the region. He added that the Council had produced Guidelines for Harmonisation of Quality Assurance/ Accreditation of Programmes in European Universities, which specified the regulatory framework that guided inter-university qualifications across the EU countries and the processes for the monitoring of the individual regulatory agencies within member countries. The Deputy Head disclosed that the EU Council hoped to support the initiative of establishing a common quality assurance framework within the West-African sub-region taking cognisance of issues like programmes and institutional accreditations, quality of staff and students and the learning environment. “The Council had also built a strong knowledge institution that was currently involved in offering facilitation, networking, contract and legal services, which would help build a strong regional institution within ECOWAS and the African Union, at large”, he said. O n t h e E r a s m u s Course Programme, Mr. Young explained further that it was designed for education, training, youth and sport for the period 2014-2020, adding that it offered a wide range of opportunities for higher education students, doctoral candidates, staff and institutions from around the world. He stated that the partnership was also aimed at harnessing the potentials and development between European universities and their Nigerian counterparts. He pointed out that one of the benefits of the partnership was that it offered Nigerian students aspiring to study in Europe the opportunity of enjoying a financing initiative and acquiring a “Joint Master's Degree” and would also enable the students apply for a “Short-term” programme with a valid certification. He also mentioned the existence of a European Credit Transfer Fund (ECTF) system that offered new guides to those applying to study in EU countries. Responding, the Executive Secretary said that the delegation was in the right place since the Commission also served as a link between Nigerian universities and their counterparts around the world. The Commission would therefore intimate the Committee of Vice Chancellors (CVC) on the collaboration. At the end of the interaction, the Executive Secretary nominated the Directors of Protocol and Special Duties as well as Research and Innovation, Mr. Chris Maiyaki and Dr. Suleiman Ramon Yusuf, to serve as NUC Desk Officers to further explore the benefits of the collaboration. Other members of the delegation were the Higher Education Expert, European University Association, Elizabeth Coluddi; Director, European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, Maria Kelo; Head of Division, German Academic Exchange Service, Stefan Bienefeld and the International Policy Officer, European Union Commission, Deirdre Lennan. Also at the meeting were some members of the NUC Management.

Professor Okojie with some members of NUC Management and the EU delegation

IBM Offers Varsities Innovative ICT Software

A delegation from the International Business Machines (IBM), West Africa Ltd, led by the Company's Engineer and Chief Scientist, Dr. Uyi Stewart, on Tuesday, 22 September, 2015, visited the Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Julius A. Okojie, OON, with an offer to introduce an innovative software technology that would use the three core Nigerian languages for teaching and learning in the education sector, especially the universities. In his speech, Dr. Stewart said that the company initiated the meeting to explore an opportunity whereby the technology could be used to support Nigerian universities, stressing that IBM wished to Strengthen its engagement in Nigeria, having already established its presence in some other African countries. He told the Executive Secretary that IBM was one of the oldest and well respected ICT companies in the world, with a rich history of innovations spanning over 104 years and spreading across 170 countries. The Team Leader disclosed that the proposal, as envisaged, would give the user a personalised education, particularly in the universities and would also bring education to the doorsteps of ordinary Nigerians. He further stated that the IBM team was more interested in deploying the technology to reposition some core Nigerian languages that were gradually dying and would pick a few universities from different geographical regions for the pilot project. To encourage the universities, Dr. Stewart said that his company was planning a competition, where the ones that could digitise the three core Nigerian languages and build an acoustic module for these languages would win some fantastic prizes. He emphasised that the whole idea was to make learning easy, available and accessible to the grassroots people, adding that the programme, which was billed to kick off in 2016, would impact lives. Responding, Professor Okojie said that the Commission was always willing and ready to partner with any organisation or group that would add value to the development of the NUS. He told the delegation that education in Nigeria required a platform where learning would be made easy for students since some students learn fast, while others are not so fast.On the proposal, the NUC Scribe noted that Nigerian universities needed an improved learningsystem, whereby students could utilise the social media, internet and other electronic media devices to learn even at play. He added that teachers at the basic education level and some lecturers needed to be exposed to several trainings that would help them improve on the usage of the envisaged software applications so as to be in a better position to impart knowledge to the students. The Executive Secretary noted that it would be necessary to include some other features such as a Mass Literacy Programme in the project, so that the rural people targeted by the company could be reached and carried along. With the current trend in technology, he said, both the educated and uneducated made use of electronic devices such as the telephone. The software in the local languages would, therefore, help the other target users learn with ease. In the delegation was the Company's Government Relations Executive, Ms. Judy Melifonwu.

Strong African Institutions Would Guarantee Quality in Higher Education- Prof. Okojie

Acting Permanent Secretary,
Federal Ministry of Education(FME)
Hajia Hindatu Umar Abdullahi

The Executive Secretary, NUC
Professor Julius A. Okojie

The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Julius A. Okojie, OON, has expressed optimism that, with strong national institutions across Africa, Quality Assurance in the continent's higher education system would be better achieved. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 7th Edition of the International Conference on Quality Assurance in Africa (ICQAHEA), held from 22 - 25 September, 2015, at the Sheraton Hotel, Abuja, Professor Okojie noted that although the two major global challenges facing higher education, were access and quality, there were also other challenges such as the quality of teachers and students, absence of a common language of communication within the African continent, issues of inter-university credit transfer and brain drain, which hampered quality assurance in the system. The Executive Secretary observed that the dwindling quality of teachers in recent times had affected the quality and performance of students, since it was

L-R: Michael Arrion, Julius Okojie, Juma Shabani, Yohannes Woldemtensae and Olin Oedekoven at the 7th ICQAHEA Conference, held in Abuja

difficult for a teacher to give what he or she did not have. He advocated continued training and retraining of teachers for optimum productivity. While advising Quality Assurance regulatory Agencies in the continent to provide adequate guidance and advice to students on their choice of institution, he advocated the strengthening of the already existing regulatory agencies in Africa for effective operations, since the countries faced common challenges of inadequate resources, capacity building, among others. Professor Okojie charged participants to maximise the opportunity provided by the Conference to address the quality assurance issues affecting the continent. With the successful completion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Executive Secretary called on African universities to key into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the overall development of the African higher education system. He maintained that education held the key to the continent's development and that with effective regional cooperation, the continent would record giant strides in the global community. Declaring the Conference open, the Acting Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Hajia Hindatu Umar Abdullahi, commended the Organisers of the Conference for the choice of th Nigeria to host the 7 ICQAHEA. She reiterated the importance of quality assurance to higher education and expressed the hope that more collaboration and networking would ensue from the Conference. She pledged the Federal Government's commitment towards ensuring a quality higher education system that would engender rapid socio-economic development of the African continent. Hajia Abdullahi stated that the Federal Government had, through the various education regulatory agencies in the country, such as the NUC, for Universities; the National Board for Technical E d u c a t i o n ( N B T E ) , f o r Polytechnics and the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), provided instruments to regulate and ensure standards in the higher education

The President, African Quality Assurance Network (AfriQAN) and Deputy Executive Secretary I, Professor Chiedu Mafiana

system. She explained that for universities, the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) had prescribed the requirements for all programmes run in the universities, adding that the NUC had been carrying out regular monitoring of the universities to ensure compliance with the set standards. The President, Global University Network for Innovation (GUNi)- Africa, Professor Peter Okebukola, explained that the Conference was meant to review the growth and recent development in Quality Assurance in higher education in Africa, with a view to charting a new course for the continent. He stated that the event would not only afford participants the opportunity of sharing important information and experience, but also look at the key thrusts for improving the quality of higher education in Africa, including elements of the AU-EU Joint Strategy, notably the tuning methodology. Professor Okebukola stated that the Conference would, among other things, evaluate the activities and achievements of AfriQAN and GUNiAfrica with a view to making projections into the future. In his remarks, the President of African Quality Assurance Network (AfriQAN) and Deputy Executive Secretary I, NUC, Professor Chiedu Mafiana, observed that although the Network was young, it held a prospect for sustainable development of African higher education. He enjoined other African countries that were yet to register with the Network to key in for effective collaboration. He looked forward to a fruitful AfriQAN General Assembly that was to hold in the course of the Conference. The European Ambassador to Nigeria, Michel Arrion, charged participants to redouble their efforts at ensuring that African universities were globally competitive. According to him, African universities and other higher education institutions had a central role to play in promoting growth, improving lives and reducing poverty in the continent. He recalled that the Africa-EU Roadmap, which was developed at the Brussel Summit, was meant to use education as a tool for driving socio-economic development in member states. Michel Arrion reiterated the European Union's support to African higher education system through international collaboration and mobility. To ensure good quality higher education system, he said, Europe and Africa needed to collaborate better at all levels, “to ensure that we have better quality, we need to cooperate better at all levels to help universities and higher education institutions develop better courses, enable students and staff to share experience across continents and ensure that we recognise each other's qualifications. We in Europe are ready to work with Africa in all these areas.”