The Federal Government (FG) has named former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, as among members of a committee to review the university system in Nigeria.
The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Rasheed, made this known in an interview with journalists in Abuja on Monday after he appeared before the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFUND to defend the 2018 budget proposed by the commission.
He also revealed that a former Executive Secretary of the NUC, Prof. Peter Okebukola was appointed chairman of the committee.
“The NUC has constituted a high-powered committee of very credible senior academics. Most of the members of this small committee are former vice chancellors; former executive secretaries of the NUC and some had held positions like pro-chancellor, chairman of INEC and minister of education.
“We have given them a six-term reference to help us with repositioning Nigeria’s university system. One of the areas we want them to look at is the issue of post-graduate training and how to reform the training and produce good quality PhDs.
“How do we get to see that serious post-graduate students complete their studies within the normal period of three years? It could be less or more than three years but three years is the normal period across the world.
“This committee has started working and it is under the chairmanship of Prof. Peter Okebukola, former Executive Secretary of NUC; with Prof. Attahiru Jega, former Vice-Chancellor and former Chairman of INEC, among others, as members,” the NUC scribe stated.
He went further to state that in the next six weeks, the NUC is expecting to receive the first report which, among other things, will help advise the commission on the best way to carry out proposed curricular review in the county and to advise on the ranking of universities.
