The Federal Government has intensified its war against fake and substandard tertiary institutions with the closure of 22 illegal colleges of education operating across the country.
The National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), which announced the development, said the affected schools were found to have failed to meet operational and academic standards after a series of compliance checks.
According to the commission, the decision to shut the institutions followed a nationwide enforcement exercise that included personnel audits and financial monitoring in all 21 federal colleges of education.
"The NCCE identified and shut down 22 illegal colleges of education operating across the country,” the commission said in a statement.
The crackdown comes on the heels of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s directive to regulatory agencies—the National Universities Commission (NUC), the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), and the NCCE—to eliminate illegal higher education institutions from the system.
Education authorities have long raised concerns over the proliferation of unapproved institutions in Nigeria, which admit unsuspecting students and issue certificates that have no legal value. Experts warn that such schools undermine quality education and erode public confidence in the system.
The NCCE reiterated its commitment to sanitizing the sector and warned students and parents to verify the accreditation status of institutions before enrollment. The commission also hinted at possible prosecution of operators of the shut-down schools for running unapproved academic programmes.
The Federal Government has vowed to sustain the enforcement exercise as part of a broader strategy to restore integrity to Nigeria’s higher education system.
Leave a Reply