Universities’ accreditation: Reps to investigate alleged corruption in NUC

The House of Representatives has directed the Committee on Tertiary Education and Services to investigate the alleged intimidation and extortion of money from universities for accreditation by the National Universities Commission (NUC).
This followed a unanimous adoption of a motion moved by Sam Onwuaso (PDP, Anambra, (Ogbaru Federal Constituency) during the plenary presided over by the Deputy Speaker, Mr Idris Wase on Wednesday.
The motion is entitled “Need to Investigate the Allegations of Corruption in the National Universities Commission (NUC) during its Accreditation of Universities’’.
Moving the motion, Onwuaso said that the NUC accreditation system had been used over the years to maintain and monitor quality and high academic standards in Nigerian universities.
He said that process to evaluate academic programmes by the commission was done every five years.
The House also noted that in the course of carrying out its mandate, the NUC accreditation teams undertook the spot assessment of facilities, lecture halls, quality of academic content and laboratories, among others.
This is to ensure that the universities meet up with the required standards to run such academic programmes to determine whether to revoke, withhold or grant accreditation.
The lawmakers expressed concern on allegations of intimidation and extortion of money from universities in order to ensure accreditation of their programmes.
Furthermore, the Reps expressed concern that the alleged monetary demands for accreditation led to increment of tuition fees by some universities to meet up with the demands of the NUC accreditation teams.
The house directed committee to investigate the allegations and report back within six weeks for further legislative.