Legal expert and elder politician, Chief AFE Babalola (SAN), has warned the federal government (FG) to inseparably approve the new university’s license.
Babalola, who established the AFE Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (Abuad), stressed that if not addressed quickly, in the long run, granting a new university without adequate attention to quality and infrastructure could have a harmful impact on the country.
Naija News Babalola issued the warning at the High Impact Research and Journal Advancement seminar hosted by Abuad in Ado-Ekiti on Monday, the report said.
He recalls that during Professor Peter Okebukola’s tenure as Executive Secretary of the National University (NUC), the committee was known for its comprehensive and diligent recognition process for the new university.
The process of visiting and certification is not only rigorous, but also makes it difficult for anyone to get approval to start a degree program, especially in areas such as medicine, engineering and law, especially in the first few years of the university’s establishment, AFE Babalola said.
“But what do we have today? A large number of recognized mushrooms and unqualified universities, some of which even lack basic learning facilities and infrastructure.
“Because of this kind of thing syndrome, the approach to university licensing and certification and the ability of NUC to ensure quality control and eliminate unqualified institutions have been severely compromised.
“Currently, we have over 270 universities in Nigeria and the National Assembly is currently considering approving proposals for another 200 new institutions,” Barbarala said.
According to Babalola, the focus now seems to be on quantity, not quality, with not enough plans to monitor its standard situation.
“The end result is a rapid decline and decay in our education system and graduate quality.
“What we need is quality education because poor education is worse than illiteracy.” Sang emphasized.
Babalola said Nigeria cannot truly make real progress in sustainable development through influential research without addressing the growing number of problems of unqualified universities in the country.
“If we really seriously accelerate national development through research, the starting point will be that the approval process for university licenses should be thorough,He said.
In his speech, Professor Okebukola, titled “High-impact research publications for the development of sustainable countries in Nigeria: Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions”, highlighted the need to establish collaboration with international researchers to improve the ranking of Nigerian institutions.
