FG to gazette visitation panel to federal universities
Doosuur iwambe, Abuja
The visitation panels to the 38 federal universities and four Inter-University centres recently approved by the President Muhammadu Buhari, will soon be gazetted enable the successful take off of the exercise, the National Universities Commission (NUC), has said.
The Executive Secretary, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed who was briefing the Quality Assurance Committee of the NUC Board during their meeting in Abuja, said that the federal ministry of education was working with the ministry of justice to ensure that the gazetting was done expeditiously.
He said that as soon as the gazetting was done, the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu would inaugurate the panels after which they would proceed to their respective universities for the assignment.
He explained that all federal universities and Inter-University Centres would receive a visitation team each except the universities created less than five years ago.
He listed the five universities to include, the Maritime University, Okerenkoko, the Army University, Biu and the Federal University of Health Sciences, Otukpo as they were not due for such visitation, adding that the other universities: the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna, Airforce Institute of Technology (AFIT), Kaduna and the Police Academy, Wudil would also not be visited.
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Prof. Rasheed also said that the audit would cover a period of ten years for all the universities to be visited except for the federal universities in Birnin Kebbi, Gashua and Gusau whose audit would cover only five years as they were created less than ten years ego.
Their report would cover the period 2013 to 2017. “For the ten year period each visitation panel is to produce two separate reports of five years each covering January 2011 to December 2015 and January 2016 to December 2020”, he said.
According to Prof. Rasheed, the Chairmen of the Panels were drawn from some of the best retired Public servants including a former Chief of Army Staff, six former Heads of Service of the Federation; former federal permanent secretaries; former vice chancellors; and Professors Emeriti, amongst several others.
He said that membership of Panels was largely drawn from serving and retired academics and non-academics, retired public servants, professionals and the military, adding that “each Panel will have an accountant, a lawyer, an architect and or an engineer; an experienced professor and an experienced university administrator who would either be a former registrar, a former bursar or others.
