The Federal Government has granted provisional licenses for the establishment of nine new private universities in Nigeria, while imposing a seven-year embargo on the creation of new federal tertiary institutions to curb duplication and redundancy among universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.
The decision was reached at Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, presided over by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Speaking to State House correspondents after the meeting, Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, said the move was aimed at addressing the worsening state of infrastructure and manpower in the country’s existing tertiary institutions.
“In our country, access to quality financial education is no longer an issue. What we are witnessing today is the duplication of new federal tertiary institutions, which has significantly reduced the capacity of each institution and degraded both physical infrastructure and manpower.
If we do not act decisively, it will lead to marked declines in educational quality and undermine the international respect that Nigerian graduates command,” Alausa warned.
The minister noted that some previously approved federal institutions had suffered from “non-patronage”, a challenge the government is determined to avoid.
“We are doing this to halt the decay in tertiary institutions, which could in future affect the quality of education and lead to unemployment among graduates,” he added.
Alausa revealed that the Tinubu administration inherited 551 pending requests for the establishment of tertiary institutions. After applying stricter approval guidelines, the number was reduced to 79, with nine private universities receiving clearance from the FEC on Wednesday.
