The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, NUC, Julius Okojie, says that the agency would not be rushed into accrediting courses for the University of Abuja School of Medicine, effectively putting paid to students clamour for certification of the programme.
Okojie made this known at the opening of a three-day National Stakeholder’s meeting on the Nigerian Research and Education Network in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said although the students had been clamouring and protesting for the accreditation of the courses, the NUC must follow due process in granting accreditation to the programme.
Last Monday, the medical students of the University barricaded the entrance to the school, protesting non-accreditation that has left them stagnant on a level for five years and demanded to be transferred to other universities to complete their programmes.
They said they were tired of the school authorities “lying to us, deceiving us, wasting our productive years,” and asked for a compensation of N10 million each for the “torture” of attending school for half a decade without accreditation.
The students argued that it was not their fault that their course was not accredited, noting that the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board advertised the course and admitted students before they were told the true status of the programme.
However, Okojie reiterated that the commission was committed to ensuring that graduates were well equipped and could compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world.
He blamed the university’s former Vice Chancellors, NuhuYaqub, for initiating the engineering and medical programmes without approval.
The NUC boss said the decision to suspend the programme followed an inspection by the commission’s team where they discovered that the university has failed to equip its community clinic, a basic requirement for medical examination.
He said that as a result, the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, refused to allow the medical students to sit for their final examination, the MBBS.
Without MBBS examinations since 2005, the medical students, more than 100 of them so far, have never officially reached their fourth year of medical study.
The Engineering students of the university were transferred to five other universities in the country, after a similar protest in November 2012.
Source: ICIR
