We’ll soon approve 150 more private universities’ – NUC

Executive Secretary, Nigeria Universities Commission, NUC, Prof Adamu Abubakar Rasheed, weekend disclosed that there will be 150 additional private universities in the next three years even as he took a swipe at people calling for suspension of approval for the establishment of such schools.

According to him, anyone calling for the stoppage of issuance of license to more universities is ignorant because the 152 universities in Nigeria are not adequate for a population of over 150 million people.

Speaking at the first founders day lecture of the University of Medical Science, Ondo State and analysing the Nigerian universities system with the State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, and Emeritus Prof Oladipo Akinkugbe, Rasheed noted that Nigerian universities cannot isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Using Argentina as a yardstick, the NUC boss stated that Argentina’s population of about 44 million has 1705 universities while several other developing counties with lesser population than Nigeria has over 300 universities.

According him, the challenges facing the universities include: the governing structure, the provincial forces competing against the actual forces that seek to retain the established or sustain the cut of the University, where university community are arguing about who will be the next Vice-Chancellor and who comes from the community where the University is located.

‘’Presently, 243 applications are being processed for private universities, so in the next two to three years, we will have about 150 private universities,” he said.