NUC boss tasks varsity staff on academic qualifications

The National Universities Commission (NUC) has disclosed that fewr than 60 per cent of academic staff members and lecturers across Nigeria’s 143 universities have bagged the PhD degree.

The Executive Secretary of the commission, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, disclosed this yesterday at a University of Benin colloquium, and urged more academic development among varsity workers.

The colloqium was in honour of the institution’s staff/17 alumni appointed by the federal and state governments between 2015 and 2016.

Abubakar spoke on the topic: ‘Nigerian universities: thinking outside the box to embrace innovative and positive change.’

Abubakar, represented by a Director of Research in NUC, Dr. Suleiman Ramah, noted that, “there are some challenges in the system that have almost refused to go away. Many of our academic staff in fact, across the university system in Nigeria today, which is made up of 143 universities; less than 60 percent of the academic staff have PhD degree. This is a very serious problem. “If you look at it critically from the perspective of succession, planning, quality of teaching and learning.”

Abubakar said the commission has proposed new guidelines of assessment for all Nigerian universities in 2017 while some with good performance of research may benefit from the Federal Government funding tied to the exercise.

He also charged vice-chancellors to see fund raising and mobilization as the integral part of their jobs without compromising the ethics and core values of academia or depressing the quality of education.

He added: “Underfunding of universities is an issue. For us in Nigeria, as things stand now, the Federal government is not likely anytime soon to be able to meet all our recurrent and capital needs.”