President Muhammadu Buhari had approved Visitation Panels to 38 federal universities and four Inter-University Centres recently, however, the Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed has disclosed that it would be gazetted to enable the exercise to be carried out.
Briefing the Quality Assurance Committee of the NUC Board during their meeting in Abuja, Prof. Rasheed said that the federal ministry of education was working with the justice ministry to ensure that the gazetting was done expeditiously. He said that as soon as the gazetting was done, the Hon. Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu would inaugurate the panels after which they would proceed to their respective universities for the assignment.
He explained that all federal universities and Inter-University Centres would receive a visitation team each except those universities created less than five years ago: the Maritime University, Okerenkoko, the Army University, Biu and the Federal University of Health Sciences, Otukpo as they were not due for such visitation, adding that the other universities: the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna, Airforce Institute of Technology (AFIT), Kaduna and the Police Academy, Wudil would also not be visited.
Prof. Rasheed also said that the audit would cover a period of ten years for all the universities to be visited except for the federal universities in Birnin Kebbi, Gashua and Gusau whose audit would cover only five years as they were created less than ten years ego. Their report would cover the period 2013 to 2017. “For the ten-year period each visitation panel is to produce two separate reports of five years each covering January 2011 to December 2015 and January 2016 to December 2020”, he said.
