Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, Chairman of the Board of the National Universities Commission, NUC, and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, has said conflicts between the NUC and professional regulatory bodies are imposing immeasurable costs on Nigerian universities and students.
Ogundipe stated this while delivering the 16th convocation lecture of Osun State University, UNIOSUN, held on Thursday at the university’s main campus in Osogbo.
The lecture, titled, ‘Coping With Double Oversight: Harmonising The NUC And Professional Bodies For A Sustainable University System’, focused on the challenges created by overlapping regulatory responsibilities within Nigeria’s university system.
According to him, “The NUC does not operate in a vacuum. Orbiting it and sometimes in tension with it are the professional regulatory bodies including the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, COREN, Council of Legal Education, Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, Architects Registration Council of Nigeria and Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, among others.”
Ogundipe said the relationship between the NUC and professional bodies had become complex and contentious, particularly because the various organisations operate under different laws, accreditation criteria and professional standards.
He argued that Nigeria did not need less regulation of university education but better regulation, insisting that quality assurance must remain central to the system.
“The central argument of this lecture is simple: Nigeria does not need less regulation of university education; it needs better regulation. Quality assurance must remain non-negotiable,” he said.
He added that overlapping mandates, inconsistent requirements and duplicated accreditation processes could create difficulties for institutions and students, stressing the need for clearly defined responsibilities.
“As a university administrator who has served at departmental, faculty, postgraduate, academic planning and senior management levels, I have learnt that regulation succeeds only when it is predictable, transparent, proportionate and developmental,” Ogundipe said.
The professor identified six major fault lines in the relationship between the NUC and professional bodies as curriculum ownership and content, accreditation timelines and costs, minimum standards versus professional standards, institutional capacity, professional council resistance to new universities, post-NYSC professional registration challenges, and data gaps.
He also opposed attempts by professional bodies to determine qualifications for academic work in universities, while noting that Nigeria still had an insufficient number of universities relative to its population.
Ogundipe said the regulatory challenges imposed costs on institutional planning, academic staff, students, public trust and national development, calling for a shift from an accreditation-centred system to a broader quality assurance culture.
He disclosed that the NUC would require universities to update their data annually as part of efforts to address moonlighting among academic staff, while urging institutions to take greater responsibility for maintaining standards.
He proposed a five-pillar framework comprising legislative and policy clarification of jurisdictional boundaries, a permanent national consultative framework, harmonised accreditation protocols, student-protective developmental accreditation, and a shared national regulatory information platform.
Ogundipe also outlined a six-point implementation agenda, including establishing a national task group, developing unified regulatory matrices, piloting coordinated accreditation, enforcing student-protection protocols, institutionalising regulatory intelligence and leveraging collective advocacy.
He urged graduating students to understand the regulatory framework governing their professions, advising them not to wait for the system to come to them but to register with relevant professional bodies and participate actively.
In his welcome address, the Vice-Chancellor of UNIOSUN, Professor Odunayo Clement Adebooye, said the university had grown in leaps and bounds, attributing its stability partly to the character of successive administrations in Osun State.
Adebooye said convocation lectures provided opportunities for ideas generated within academia to influence public policy, adding that policymakers often drew from recommendations made during such academic engagements.
The vice-chancellor disclosed that UNIOSUN had expanded from 66 academic programmes in 2022 to 128, while its postgraduate programmes had increased from 99 to 299.
He also disclosed that the university had secured 175 international research grants, describing the development as part of the institution’s growth in teaching, research and academic engagement.
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