The Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) has reiterated its commitment to the international benchmark in providing 21st century knowledge-driven education and fostering intellectual growth across the country.
The NUC deputy director, Mrs Anthonia Bawa, spoke in Ikere-Ekiti, Ikere Council Area of Ekiti state on Tuesday, July 9, during the opening ceremony of the accreditation excercise of 45 academic programmes at the Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology.
Bawa said that NUC, as the regulatory agency for universities in Nigeria was irrevocably commited to ensuring proper development of university education and implementation of minimum academic standards.
She expressed joy the commission is achieving its goals and objectives going by distinguished quality of graduates being produced by Nigerian universities who she said can favourably compete with their counterparts in other climes.
She said that the accreditation excercise was not to witch hunt anyone but rather to verify the quality of physical facilities and human resources available for the commencement of new programmes.
The director added that the accreditation was necessary to holistically evaluate proposed programmes to ensuring the university meet the global benchmark for quality academic standard.
She commended BOUESTI management for its enthusiastic reception of the NUC team,assuring that the delegation would carried out the exercise with high sense of professionalism.
In his remarks, BOUESTI Vice Chancellor, Professor Olufemi Adeoluwa assured the NUC members of the NUC delegation of the university’s cooperation and support to ensure a smooth exercise during its stay in the institution.
Adeoluwa said expressed optimism that the maiden accreditation exercise for the institution’s 45 academic programmes would be accredited after completion of the excercise because the management has best its meet the requirements set by the NUC.
He said: “This is a special time in the prestigious bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology being the maiden accreditation of the 45 programmes we started with. We now have 78 programmes. The first 45 are to be accredited this week and today is the starting point.
“We are ready for the exercise. I must tell you that there’s no university in Nigeria that is perfect especially when it has to do with staffing because the brain drain has affected university education in Nigeria. But even then we have done our best to be able to have requisite number and quality of staff we are supposed to have in some of the programmes. We they get there, they we see what we have presented and they would be able to assess us.
“Our hope is to have full accreditation for every of those 45 programmes. We have done our best. Like I told them, we don’t do window dressing here. Whatever they have seen is what we have because we believe we our programmes is strong that the students will be able to benefit and the nation itself will be able to have well grounded graduates. So, we expect positive results from NUC”, he added.
