FG MANDATES UNIVERSITIES, POLYTECHNICS TO PARTICIPATE IN TERTIARY INSTITUTION RANKING
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By:Tajudeen Aminat
The Federal Government has directed all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria to participate in the national tertiary education ranking exercise, expanding the initiative beyond universities.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced the policy on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting with the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee, which has now been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Alausa said the broader ranking framework was aimed at promoting quality, accountability, institutional performance and global competitiveness across Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.
According to him, the ranking system would give institutions clear benchmarks for evaluating their performance, identifying areas for improvement and tracking their progress, while also promoting healthy competition among them.
Under the new framework, universities, polytechnics and colleges of education will be assessed under a unified national ranking system, with funding for the exercise expected to come from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
Alausa said the 2026/2027 ranking exercise for universities would begin in September, while the committee would determine when the process would be extended to polytechnics and colleges of education.
He added that the government would establish guidelines to institutionalise the exercise and formally notify vice-chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions that participation would be mandatory.
The minister said the initiative formed part of President Bola Tinubu’s education reforms under the Renewed Hope Agenda and was being implemented through the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative.
He also pledged that the Federal Ministry of Education would provide the necessary policy direction, funding and capacity-building support to ensure the ranking exercise remained credible, sustainable and impactful.
Alausa said the ministry would collaborate with the committee to provide in-service training and institutional capacity-building programmes across tertiary institutions, with the aim of improving their performance and increasing Nigeria’s representation in global rankings.
The Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Ahmad, described the initiative as an important step towards improving accountability and quality within the country’s tertiary education system.
She said healthy competition would encourage institutions to assess their performance, identify shortcomings and continuously improve the quality of education they provide.
Suwaiba also stressed that both public and private institutions should be covered by the ranking exercise, noting that it would help establish and maintain minimum standards across the sector.
Chairman of the ranking advisory committee and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Emeritus Professor Peter Okebukola, said the committee’s meeting with Alausa followed a memorandum congratulating the Tinubu administration on the growing number of Nigerian universities securing recognition in global rankings.
Okebukola said the committee had also advocated increased investment in university education to sustain the progress recorded so far.
However, he noted that the minister went beyond the committee’s original proposal by expanding the mandate of the ranking body to include polytechnics and colleges of education.
The expansion led to the transformation of NURAC into the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Okebukola expressed optimism that sustained investment, improved institutional capacity and the new national ranking framework would enable more Nigerian tertiary institutions to make significant progress in international rankings.
He said the framework would position Nigerian institutions to compete more effectively with leading universities and other tertiary institutions globally.
The policy comes amid growing pressure on Nigerian tertiary institutions to improve their performance in global rankings, which assess factors such as research output, academic reputation, citations, international outlook and institutional resources.
While more Nigerian universities have gained positions in international rankings, challenges including inadequate funding, limited research capacity, poor infrastructure, staffing constraints and weak global competitiveness continue to affect the sector.
The expansion of the national ranking exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education is expected to create a broader system for measuring institutional performance and monitoring the quality and competitiveness of tertiary education across Nigeria.
Making participation compulsory also represents a shift from voluntary involvement to a system where institutions will be required to provide data and measure their performance against nationally established benchmarks.
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