Black Market Universities

WHEN the National Universities Commission complains about illegal universities what are we supposed to do? When it tells us thousands of unqualified students obtain university education, are we to mourn or applaud?

Professor Julius Okogie, the Executive Secretary of the NUC, is laying these complaints and they are better stated in his own succinct words.

“Problems in the nation’s university system are being compounded by many of the first generation universities that had set up unapproved centres to admit students that could not pass the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB.”

He continued with the complaints: “A foremost federal university in the South-West had 13 unapproved centres while another had six unapproved centres with about 81,000 students in the centres. “Some of the state universities contribute to the problems of education in the country by having more part time students than regular students. Many of the specialised universities like the universities of technology and agriculture have lost focus and deviated from the objective for which they were set up”.


Professor Okojie was Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture in Abeokuta. He therefore knows about the practices in the universities yet he made his complaints to a wrong audience – the retreat of the senior staff of Achievers University in Owo.

Why should the Executive Secretary of the NUC be complaining about infractions by universities? What sanctions did the NUC impose on these universities? Why did he not name the foremost university involved in illegal admissions? At least two universities meet this description. Where was the NUC during these broad breaches of the laws that should ensure quality of university education? Are universities that fail to submit to the regulations of the NUC allowed to continue to exist?

Professor Okojie should tell Nigerians what sanctions were applied to the offending universities and their authorities. One of the major problems that result in the ineffectiveness of the NUC is that its Executive Secretaries, being former Vice Chancellors, believe their main brief is to defend their colleagues, who have reduced our universities to non-academic environments.


After his lamentations, we expected that Professor Okojie would have listed the sanctions that have been unleashed on NUC staff, who connived with the offending universities. He was silent on this, just as he ignored the fact that NUC accreditation teams often turn in tainted reports under the influence of corrupt university authorities, who know that their godfathers in the NUC would protect them.
Professor Okojie was short of blaming students for patronising illegal university education. The blame is squarely the NUC’s.

Students have no means of knowing illegal universities. The NUC is telling them it cannot protect them from wolves in academic gowns who have the NUC on their side. This is the latest admission from the NUC that it has abdicated its duties to Nigerians, something that has been mere suspicion for years. Who will regulate university education since the NUC cannot?