The Federal Government has announced plans to overhaul the accreditation and quality assurance system for Nigerian tertiary institutions, with measures aimed at ending the practice of schools presenting borrowed staff, equipment and facilities during accreditation exercises.
The Minister of Education, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, announced the reform at the inauguration of a Ministerial Committee on Strengthening Accreditation and Quality Assurance Systems for Tertiary Institutions. He warned institutions against creating temporary facilities or presenting personnel who are not genuinely part of their workforce simply to satisfy accreditation teams.
Alausa said the existing system, which largely relies on accreditation exercises conducted every three to five years, allows some institutions to manipulate the process by moving equipment and staff from other schools for inspection and returning them afterwards.
He stressed that accreditation should reflect the actual capacity of an institution and the resources available to students throughout the year, rather than a temporary arrangement designed to impress an inspection team.
Under the proposed reforms, the government plans to deploy digital mapping, digital identification and other technologies to track institutional facilities and equipment. Items presented during accreditation would have unique digital records indicating their location and condition, making it more difficult for institutions to move the same equipment from one school to another for separate accreditation exercises.
The system will also provide a means of verifying the employment status of academic and other staff presented by institutions. The proposed use of national identification numbers is expected to help identify cases where the same person is falsely presented as a full-time employee by multiple institutions.
The Federal Government further plans to establish a central digital platform containing verified information on tertiary institutions. Accreditation teams would be able to review institutional data before physical visits, while on-site inspections would be used primarily to confirm the information already captured on the system.
The reform builds on digital accreditation measures already being implemented by the National Board for Technical Education. NBTE said it introduced digital accreditation in 2024 specifically to address issues including falsified data, borrowed equipment and rented lecturers, and reported that more than 90 per cent of its accreditations were being conducted digitally.
A ministerial committee has now been constituted to develop a new accreditation framework applicable across the different tertiary education regulatory bodies. The Federal Government said the objective is to make accreditation more credible, transparent, efficient and firmly based on verifiable evidence.
The proposed changes are expected to place greater responsibility on universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions to maintain their approved standards continuously, rather than preparing specifically for periodic accreditation visits.
