FG Inaugurates First Online Varsity Accreditation Portal

The Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufa’i has  in Calabar inaugurated the country’s first online university accreditation portal.

The portal provided by the National Universities Commission (NUC) at the cost of N500 million was installed at the University of Calabar.

In her speech at a one-day workshop on the use of the portal, held at the university, Rufa’i said the system would “kick start an ICT revolution in the administration of our universities’’.

Our correspondent  reports that the facility has a mass storage capacity of more than 36, 000 files.

Defended the poor rating of Nigerian universities in Africa, she said it was not due to lack of intellectual capacity, stressing “we know that the poor rating is not due to lack of the required intellectual capacity but basically due to poor management of the resources in our institutions and our inability to use the Internet.

“This project is, therefore, a bold step towards building world-class universities in Nigeria.

“The management of our university system will definitely not be the same again”, the minister said.

She said it was also part of a deliberate government policy to develop ICT facilities for the effective and efficient management of the university system, adding that the initiative was a product of the NUC data base project began by the Federal Government in 2008.

The Executive Secretary of the commission, Prof. Julius Okojie, said the project would place the universities at par with other universities across the world.

He noted that the portal was provided to fully automate the accreditation processes of the academic programmes of the universities.

“We must move forward to get our work properly done and faster by deploying proper ICT setting”, Okojie said, pointing out  that the NUC would partner with development institutions to encourage the university system to grow.

Also speaking, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. James Epoke, commended the initiative which he said had come at a time “the university system in Nigeria was at the lower rung of the ranking scale’’.

He appreciated the goodwill of the minister to the institution, saying that it had facilitated its inclusion in the special intervention programme of the Tertiary Education Tax Fund.