The National Universities Commission (NUC) has debunked a social media publication alleging that universities accreditations are mere formalities and don’t take cognizance of the number of staff in the institution before approval.

The Commission noted the report attributed to one TaofikOlatubonsun contained unsubstantiated assertions circulating to misinform the general public on the Commission’s well respected accreditation tradition.

A statement signed by the Executive Secretary of NUC, Professor AbdullahiRibadu, stated: “The claim that accreditation is a mere formality to the effect that universities without adequate staffing can receive full accreditation assessment is not only false, baseless but this has been disseminated from an uninformed position.

“The Commission which would ordinarily not respond to such spurious online allegations, is duty bound to issue this rebuttal to put the record straight and clear the air on this trending issue.

“This has also become necessary so as to avert any collateral damage to the hard-earned reputation of our University System, over the glorious years.”

It pointed out that the Commission is a creation of law and is the sole regulatory agency empowered by Section 10 of the Education National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions) Act Cap E3 LFN 2004, to conduct Accreditation of Programmes in universities and other degree-awarding institutions in Nigeria.

The statement added: “It is one of the core mandates of the Commission wherein its accreditation process is a rigorous evaluation system designed to ensure that universities uphold high academic benchmarks.

“Therefore, the objective of accreditation is conformity with the extant Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards. In carrying out the exercise, the Commission adopts a peer review approach, where it engages independent panels of Professors who are subject experts to serve as evaluators in the accreditation of academic programmes.”

The Commission’s regulatory regime, the statement said, has been adjudged to be one of the most robust quality assurance ecosystems in Africa and countries like Namibia, Gambia and recently Niger Republic etc have come to understudy its best practices.

“Additionally, foreign universities regularly utilise NUC’s accreditation results for the screening of applications for admission purposes in their institutions.

“We reckon that there is no such perfect accreditation system anywhere in the world, but we are poised as a University System to continually work on deepening our culture of quality assurance.”

The statement said that the NUC’s programme accreditation evaluates individual academic programmes to ensure compliance with the Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS).