Oxford Business Group Visits NUC The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Julius A. Okojie, OON, on Thursday, 5 September, 2013, received a delegation from the Oxford Business Group (OBG), led by the Country Director, Ms. Andrea Oroil, on a courtesy visit to the Commission. Welcoming the team, Professor Okojie briefed them on the functions and roles of the NUC and the history of the Nigerian University System (NUS), especially the commencement of regional universities, which were later converted to federal universities, by the military regime. Professor Okojie said that, with the increase in the number of universities to 129, NUC’s role of ensuring the orderly development of the NUS had continued to be challenging, with regards to quality assurance and the accreditation of programmes. He, however, emphasised that the Commission had been working to maintain a balance between granting access and guaranteeing quality. Professor Okojie said that everywhere in the world, universities bring about development, adding that in places where universities were named after towns, they actually preceded the towns. He stated that it was expected that the 12 newly-established universities would do same. He said that the visit of the delegation was timely, as they came when most academic journals had gone under, leading to the rise of local journals. He stressed that the Federal Government had, in a bid to stem the trend, provided the National Book Fund, for the resuscitation of journals and research funds, to encourage scholarly publications. He acknowledged that, without opening one’s activities to others, it would be difficult for people to be aware of them. The NUC Scribe decried a situation where academics expected the Federal Government to fund the system without regulating the utilisation of such funds, as against the norm in foreign countries. In her remarks, Ms. Oroil said that they came to do research on university education in Nigeria, for publication in the OBG journal. She informed the Executive Secretary that the Group focused on conducting business intelligence for emerging markets, especially for businesses looking for investment opportunities in diverse fields such as health, finance, economics, agriculture and education, among others. According to her, OBG covered 34 markets worldwide, including the Middle East, South America and Africa, with 11 in Africa. Nigerian offices opened, in Lagos, in 2009, while the latest, Ivory Coast, opened in September, 2012. The Group has its operational base in Lagos and presently collaborates with the Oyo State Government, the University of Ibadan and some other universities. It also has the goal of expanding to other universities. The Country Director disclosed that the Group was attending the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) Conference in Abuja, where it would launch the report of its research on Nigeria’s agricultural sector, carried out in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. The Group had also carried out research on Nigeria’s capital markets, which outcome contributed to the repositioning of the stock market in Nigeria. Ms. Oroil said that the Director-General of NESG, Mr. Frank Nweke Jnr., had said that the Summit would, in the next year, focus on the education sector, which was the reason for OBG’s searchlight on the NUC, as the regulator of university education in Nigeria. She said, “The sector is the fourth in the series of our projects in Nigeria, we want to, next year, undertake an overview of the Nigerian education system, in relation to the universities. We need information from the NUC.” The leader of the delegation stressed that OBG had been holding series of meetings with some top level managers of the public and private sectors, like the Nigerian Investment and Promotions Council (NIPC), on aspects of its activities that would be of benefit to them. Some Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) within and outside Nigeria were also working with the Group and needed to know the happenings in the Nigerian education system, she added. In his contribution, the Group Head, Mr. Tim France, said that the main reason for the visit was to interact with the Executive Secretary and NUC Management on the basic areas that were of interest to the clientele of the OBG, with a view to publishing their findings in its research journal. Mr. France requested information on the courses that were over-subscribed to in the undergraduate programmes of the NUS, the level of expansion that had taken place in the system, relationship among universities, how the NUC tracked down illegal institutions and measures used to check their proliferation. Others included the number of new programmes that were introduced and the number of foreign students, especially Africans, in the system, the impact of the growth of universities on NUC’s resources, measures of NUC to ensure quality, the role of ICT in teaching and learning in the NUS, NUC’s partners as well as its introduction of a Computer-Based Testing for students. Responding, the Executive Secretary noted that the Commission recently carried out a survey on the graduate needs of the industry, where it also indicated to the manufacturing sector the courses that were over-subscribed to by students, with a view to generating feedback on their own specific needs. This was meant to form part of a new programme concept in the universities. On professional courses such as Medicine, Law, Engineering, Pharmacy, Accounting, amongst others, he said that the NUC had introduced a deliberate policy of checking the number of students admitted into the programmes, in a bid to ensure quality. The Commission also ensured that candidates seeking admission into Nigerian universities possessed prescribed minimum requirements, to ensure the quality of entrants into the system. Professor Okojie described OBG’s publishing business with the universities as a gainful initiative for the NUS. He observed that in the world of today, there was increasing ‘marketisation of education’, where issues of emerging markets occupied the front burner and agreed that Nigeria could not be left out. He recalled that, as a young lecturer in 1978, at the University of Ibadan, he was sent to Oxford University to interact with the faculty, during which he gained useful experience which shaped his life. He urged the Group to interact with relevant departments for clarification on necessary information for their publication. At the meeting were the Deputy Executive Secretary, Mr. Akinbode Agbaoye as well as some Directors and Deputy Directors of the Commission.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 19:12:18 +0000