NUC Plans to Boost ICT Usage in Varsities
Kuni Tyessi
The National Universities Commission (NUC) has embarked on a process that would ensure that universities embrace the use of Information Technology Communication (ICT) for seamless academic and non-academic operations.
The Director in charge of Directorate Research, Innovation and Information Technology, Dr. Suleiman Ramon-Yusuf, made this known in Abuja, during a meeting between the NUC board on ICT development and the directors of ICT from all Nigerian universities.
According to him, the issues confronting the system, including missing results and delay in collection of transcripts are due to the analogue method of operations in universities.
Yusuf stressed that the board is committed to resolving the challenges confronting the use of appropriate ICT tools in the universities system by ensuring that the right polices, adequate resources and capacity building are put in place by government to drive the process.
“The board has shown serious interest in ensuring that we leverage on ICT to the extent that we can actually optimise the use of these technologies to drive teaching, learning and research in Nigerian universities, so that our graduates will not just be ICT savvy, but will be graduates who have a mind-set that explains innovation as a driver of development at individual and national levels.
“This is why the committee of the board is here to discuss with the universities to find out what their issues are, what their perceptions are about ICT and most Importantly, the status of ICT in Nigerian universities in terms of infrastructure, in terms of capacity to use what is available and whatever gaps there are so that we as the regulatory agency advising government on how to intervene, so that government will be able to drive policies that will strengthen the leveraging of ICT in the Nigerian universities system.
“By the time we finish this process, it will be a thing of the past for any university to be unable to resolve some of these issues. Actually it is an embarrassment in 2018 that students are looking for transcripts. Transcripts should be available at any point in time in an organised university system,” he said.
The Chairman, NUC ICT Development Committee, Mr. Johnson Osinugo, noted that ideally, no university should graduate students that are computer illiterates.
He maintained that the committee is working in a framework to correct the anomaly, saying, “all Nigerian graduates or students regardless of department admitted into, will pass through an ICT training phase.”