The National Universities Commission (NUC) has begun the assessment of universities in the country to determine their readiness for resumption.
The Executive Secretary of NUC, Abubakar Rasheed, made this known at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday. The briefing was aimed at highlighting the contributions of Nigerian universities to the national response to COVID-19.
He said the commission had started collecting data from universities, noting that efforts were also being made to resolve the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities to prevent any further delay of academic activities in the universities.
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In the meantime, he said universities not under ASUU watch could go back to classes once the necessary guidelines have been put in place.
He said, “We gave a template to vice-chancellors of all universities requesting them to suggest to us what kind of protocols and strategies they are putting in place in the various institutions. We are collecting some of the responses which have already started coming in and at the end of the day the picture should emerge about the extent to which our universities are prepared to reopen for academic activities.”
On the contributions of Nigerian universities to the response to COVID-19, he explained that over 32 universities were involved in research aimed at mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the performance of the African Centres of Excellence had proved that world-class research and development work was possible in Nigeria.
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He said, “Particularly, the Centre for the Genomics of Infectious Diseases at the Redeemer’s University, Ede in Sequencing SARS-CoV-2 virus, the collaborative development of vaccines with the University of Cambridge and as a pioneer national testing and screening centre and the other ACES in ABU, BUK, UNILAG, UNIBEN, UNIPORT and UNIJOS that also served as national testing and screening centres have proved that world-class Research and Development work is possible in Nigeria.”
According to him, a compendium put together by the Commission showed that Nigerian universities are making contributions to development. “University of Jos is leading in herbal and natural product development and it can do more if the Federal Government releases more funds to it for research purposes.
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“As in many other parts of the world, the pandemic has challenged our knowledge system, which has proved inadequate and insufficiently robust enough to respond to the challenges. Only a few institutions have been able to utilise the open and distance learning system to keep students engaged while the pandemic lasted and only few laboratories continued with research and development activities,” he said.
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