Fred Ezeh, Abuja

The National Universities Commission (NUC) has confirmed that 1.9 million students are currently being enrolled in over 164 Nigerian universities.

It also confirmed that 51, 000 people are currently engaged in academic work in the various universities, saying that it was discouraging statistics that ought to be improved upon.

This was contained in a universities’ statistical digest (2017) presented by the NUC Executive Secretary, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, at a two day retreat for governing council members of the Nigerian universities with the theme “element of statutory governance, procurement and financial accounting” held in Abuja on Tuesday.

Related News

The NUC boss confessed that no reliable statistical data was left for him to plan his programmes when he was newly appointed in August 2016, and that affected his pace of work as the NUC boss.

He said: “I was totally disturbed that we could not lay our hand on a verifiable statistics that would have help us with our plans for our universities. That made me to spend my first year as NUC boss studying some obvious inaccurate statistics being brandish in different quarters regarding the current situation in our Nigerian universities.

“I was forced contact various stakeholders and they requested that I constitute NUC strategic advisory committee led by Prof. Peter Okebukola, to carry out the audit of universities in 2017 and we are glad with what we got.”

He, however, promised that the statistical digest would be an annual publication that will highlight the development and situation in the Nigerian universities in the previous year and it will always be released at the end of first quarter of every year.