The Federal Government has announced that universities in Nigeria need to score at least 70 per cent in four key areas—Academic Matters, Staffing, Physical Facilities, and Library—to get full accreditation from the National Universities Commission (NUC).

A statement on Thursday, signed by the Commission’s Executive Secretary, Prof. Abdullahi Ribadu, stated that the accreditation process is rigorous and designed to ensure universities uphold high academic standards.

“The programme accreditation instrument used for the exercise has seven sections, four of which are considered core areas, including Academic Matters, Staffing, Physical Facilities, and Library.

“To attain Full Accreditation Status, a programme must score a minimum of 70% in each of the four core areas and an overall score of 70% or above in its entirety. It is important to note that earning Full Accreditation Status does not imply that a programme has all the necessary resources in perfect measure.

“However, this is deemed to be an acceptable standard of performance, with adequate room for further improvements,” Prof. Ribadu explained.

He further stated that the NUC’s regulatory regime is one of the most robust quality assurance ecosystems in Africa.

“The Commission’s regulatory regime has been adjudged to be one of the most robust quality assurance ecosystems in Africa, and countries like Namibia,
Gambia, and recently Niger Republic, among others, 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,” he added.

The NUC also drew attention to a social media publication that made unsubstantiated assertions about the Commission’s accreditation tradition.

The Commission described the claim that accreditation is a mere formality as false, baseless, and disseminated from an uninformed position.