The Federal Government has warned heads of tertiary institutions against manipulating accreditation processes, saying compromising officials risk losing their jobs.
It added that private institutions involved in such acts could have their operating licences revoked.
Education Minister Tunji Alausa issued the warning while inaugurating the Ministerial Committee on Strengthening the Accreditation and Quality Assurance System for Tertiary Institutions in Abuja yesterday.
He, however, revealed that the government would soon deploy technology to transform accreditation from a predominantly manual and periodic exercise into a digital, data-driven and continuously verifiable system.
Alausa said the government would no longer tolerate institutions presenting inflated, misleading or temporary records of their academic capacity to accreditation teams.
He stressed that approved standards must be maintained throughout the year.
The minister stated that the consequences of poor accreditation were already evident in the difficulty employers face in finding qualified graduates from Nigerian tertiary institutions.
Alausa stated: ‘People say they want to hire engineers. They will have 500 candidates, but they wouldn’t be able to get two, three, four or five qualified applicants. That’s the damage we’re doing to this university.
‘But guess what? This Ministry of Education is not going to let this continue. Other presidents, other governments may have allowed this to continue, but we are not going to let this continue.
‘And at the end of this, there will be consequences. You will go and represent the others, and your institution will lose its standing.
‘The world will put the consequences in place. You will lose your job if you don’t act on time. Private institutions will lose their licences.’
He also announced plans to end the practice of institutions temporarily borrowing academic staff members, equipment and other facilities from other institutions in order to meet accreditation requirements.
Alausa said accreditation processes must reflect the actual and sustainable capacity of an institution rather than a temporary arrangement put together ahead of an accreditation visit.
‘An institution should not be able to prepare a temporary picture of itself simply for an accreditation visit.
‘Sadly, this is what persists in the majority of instances,’ the minister said.
Alausa also said the Federal Government would tackle the practice of temporarily moving academic and non-academic personnel between institutions or presenting them for accreditation before returning them to their original institutions.
He stated that the same measures would apply to laboratory equipment, workshop resources, library materials and other facilities temporarily borrowed or presented solely for accreditation purposes.
‘Whatever an accreditation team sees and verifies must represent the institution’s genuine and sustainable capacity,’ he said.
He stated that the National Universities Commission(NUC), National Board for Technical Education and National Commission for Colleges of Education had critical roles to play in protecting the quality of tertiary education.
‘An institution should not meet prescribed standards only when the NUC, NBTE or NCCE accreditation team is expected to visit. Those standards should be met every day of the year,’ Alausa said.
On the planned deployment of technology for the accreditation process, the minister said: ‘With a robust digital accreditation platform, much of the institutional information required for accreditation can be continuously maintained and periodically verified.
‘Before an accreditation team arrives, the accrediting agency should already have reliable information on institutional staffing, facilities, laboratories, workshops and other equipment.
‘The physical visit will remain important, but it should increasingly serve to validate verified data rather than begin the verification process from scratch.’
Alausa directed the committee to develop mechanisms for verifying the authenticity and continuous availability of academic and non-academic staff members presented for accreditation.
The committee is also expected to establish systems for verifying the ownership, functionality, adequacy, accessibility and sustained availability of facilities and equipment presented by institutions.
The minister called for the use of geospatial mapping, geotagging and appropriate digital identification technologies for physical infrastructure, laboratories, workshops and major equipment.
‘Critical equipment presented for accreditation should be capable of being digitally identified and linked to a specific institution and physical location,’ he said.
He also advocated a comprehensive digital identity management and staff verification framework to establish the presence and institutional affiliation of personnel presented for accreditation.
Alausa said collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission should be explored to utilise the National Identification Number, alongside appropriate use of Bank Verification Number infrastructure and other secure technologies.
He said the framework would establish the principle of ‘one individual, one verifiable identity and an accurately declared institutional affiliation’ while detecting cases where an individual was improperly presented as full-time personnel in multiple institutions.
The minister also expressed concern over illegal admissions into tertiary institutions, saying such admissions had run into hundreds of thousands.
He blamed the situation partly on the tolerance of irregularities under previous administrations but assured Nigerians that the President Bola Tinubu administration would no longer allow such practices to continue.
Chairman of the committee and former Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof Is-haq Oloyede, pledged the committee’s commitment to addressing abuses in the accreditation process.
Oloyede said accreditation should not be treated as an exercise for which institutions temporarily prepare, stressing that continuous monitoring was necessary to ensure standards were maintained beyond accreditation visits.