NUC to introduce anti-plagiarism software

The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) Professor Abubakar Rasheed said the agency will soon introduce anti-plagiarism software in institutions to check academic theft.

He stated this in Abuja yesterday during a workshop organised by NUC in collaboration with the World Bank on proposed ‘Higher Education Reform and Africa Centre of Excellence-Impact.’

Prof. Rasheed said the population of students currently studying in Nigerian universities has reached about two million.

He identified injustice in the institutions to include delay in release of results; money for marks, sexual harassment, delay in release of transcripts, saying such acts has impacted negatively on the quality of graduates in the country.

“Many of our graduates in Art, in Humanities, in Social Sciences cannot construct sensible sentences in paragraphs, they cannot take minutes. Many of our graduates in Science, in Applied Science, in Engineering cannot fit in after a little training into the challenges of the real life of the industries, and so on,” he said.

He said the ugly development prompted the Commission to set up a committee headed by Prof. Peter Okebukola, adding that by the end of the year the level of academic corruption would be reduced by 10 per cent.