NUC – Nigerian Varsities Will Soon Go Paperless

Information just reaching ngscholars has it that the National universities Commission already has plans to make all Universities in Nigeria operate without the use of papers. This means that they will do all things on computer. This article was initially posted on Vanguard and we have our own reserbations and questions about this.

Propelled by the global educational challenge in the 21st Century, National Universities Commission, NUC, has stated that the Nigerian university system will now go paperless as it has launched a portal called, ‘Nigerian University System Management Portal, NUSMAP.

Speaking at the two-day workshop held at the University of Lagos weekend, the Executive Secretary of NUC, Professor Julius Okojie who spoke through the Quality Assurance Officer, NUC, Mrs Dorcas Agbara said; “NUSMAP is an online programme designed to enable our universities process, share and communicate data with the NUC, the public and other government agencies for proper planning and management.” Prof Okojie, NUC Executive Secretary According to him, the workshop targeted at directors of Academic Planning of Nigerian universities, Directors of ICT of Nigerian universities and other officers, was designed for training and re-training of personnel involved in the administration and data management of universities at all levels to promote efficiency and quality planning with verifiable data. “It’s actually a challenge to the Nigerian university in terms of the basic minimum academic standards they have to meet in the area of ICT,” he said.

“This system has the capacity to capture the activities of all directorates of the commission, which include Universities ProgrammeAccreditation, Universities Academic Standards, University System Annual Review Meeting (USARM), Universities Research and Innovation, Finance and Budget, among others.”

Okojie who maintained that NUSMAP is designed to vouchsafe NUC’s committment to bringing the Nigerian university system to standard inline with 21st Century realities, added that it will also improve on the NUC and Nigerian university operations and serve as an authoritative platform for exploring information about universities nationwide.

At the workshop, representatives from 21 South-West universities some of which were, University of Ibadan. Lagos State University, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State, Osun State University etc., were trained on the processes of using the NUSMAP.

Commenting on the relevance of the application, Executive Consultant, Gucci-Chis Nigeria Limited and facilitator, Honourable PaulAdingwupu said; “The universities have for years been doing accreditation, they have been submitting documents and so on to NUC, these papers if analysed, are things that will lead to measurement of academic standard which is the bone of every university, adding, “if the standard is not kept, then the university cannot make it high.” According to him, NUC has taken a bold step and decided that every accreditation, every academic standard tour is going to be online so that the outside world and those rating the universities will see that we have the actual carrying capacity and what it takes to be in the first1000 in ranking when this process is fully implemented.

Adingwupu who noted that the NUSMAP has a Geographic Information System (GIS) which enables the NUC to verify all data, added that some would be sent in pictorial form and the Information Help Desk will help the prospective students, their parents and those outside Nigeria to have a feedback- oriented interaction with the appropriate resource centre of NUC.

His words; “All universities in Nigeria are participating in different zones because five zones were created: Federal University of Technology, Minna, NUC Abuja as a zone, University of Lagos, University of Benin and University of Calabar, so all the universities were shared to each of the zones and they would go to these zones and participate and all they need to know about university accreditation, university management and so on, will be accessible to them.”

My View: Yes, we can call this a very good idea and it will speed up development in the education sector. My quesions are:

1. We have so many workers in the Nigerian Education sector who are not computer literate. Are schopls going to do away with them and employ computer literate ones? Is government going to spend money on training them?
2. What would become of all documents already on paper? Are we going to make sure they find their way to computer, so that their soft copy becomes available? Or are we still going to refer to them when they are needed?

Many questions for NUC to answer.