The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has advised against the fragmentation of universities into enclaves of respective Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government
The Registrar made this observation during a public hearing organised by the House Committee on Health on the establishment of the universities of health and medical sciences. He said the fragmentation of the control of universities into different ministries, departments and agencies would be counterproductive. He posited that this practice is an aberration and would only continue to create confusion. He said for proper coordination and in consonance with global best practices, all universities should be placed under the control of the Federal Ministry of Education for coherent engagements with like institutions globally.
By way of illustration, he said in a situation whereby universities of agriculture are taken to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Universities of Health Sciences to Federal Ministry of Health and technical-related universities to Works and Housing, there would be no cohesion. These, according to him, would not add any value to the education system rather it would, more than anything, depict our system as a disorganised, unplanned and an inconsistent one which would make interaction with other universities in other climes challenging. He said, “It is an aberration to begin to have universities attached to ministries or agencies with no bearing to education. The Ministry of Education should continue to be the custodian and policy hub of education in the country and this should not be frustrated by any desire to carve out areas of influence”.
He charged the leadership of the House of Representatives to ensure that the House Committee on Tertiary Education provides quality inputs into any consideration for the establishment of any university. Prof. Oloyede said he supported the establishment of specialised universities especially with regard to the health inclined ones but urged that certain fundamental issues needed to be addressed to make such critical universities achieve optimal results.
He pointed out that he would rather prefer such universities to be properly named as “University of Health Sciences” rather than constraining them to “University of Medicine or University of Health and Medical Sciences.” This, according to him, narrows their scope as they are established to take care of all health related sciences and other affiliate disciplines and not only medicine. He also advocated that the National Universities Commission should be allowed to not only supervise but also be on the driving seat of superintending over universities and other contingent areas of operations such as the provisioning of essential tools especially at the early stages of the planning of the establishment of these universities. He also advocated the sourcing of statistical data from the NUC by prospective proprietors of universities as only that agency could shed light on those critical components that would support the establishment of viable universities that would be able to fill certain observed education gaps.
