The National Universities Commission will begin monitoring universities after their programmes have been accredited and will check whether institutions are admitting more students than they can accommodate, its Executive Secretary, Prof. Abdullahi Yusufu Ribadu, has said. Ribadu announced the measures on Tuesday in Abuja at the opening of the commission’s 2026 retreat with vice-chancellors of federal, state and private universities. He said the commission was also building accreditation software and drawing up a national artificial intelligence roadmap for the university system.
According to Ribadu, the commission has already introduced post-matriculation monitoring and carrying-capacity visits to keep admissions within approved limits. It is now preparing post-accreditation visits to make sure standards do not slip once a programme has secured approval. Ribadu, who assumed office on December 23, 2024, said the commission was also drafting new guidelines on the award and use of honorary doctorate degrees, with sanctions for universities that break the rules.
The pressure on admissions explains much of the regulator’s focus. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board said 2,243,816 candidates registered for the 2026 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, a 10.5 per cent rise on the 2.03 million recorded in 2025. Lagos alone accounted for 381,814 candidates. Of the roughly 1.9 million results released from the first three days of the examination, only about 12,000 candidates, or 0.63 per cent, scored above 300.
The university system has also grown quickly. The NUC approved 33 new universities in 2025, made up of seven federal, six state and 20 private institutions, bringing the total recognised by the commission to about 309. Each new university and programme adds to the number of institutions the regulator must inspect, which is the gap the accreditation software and monitoring visits are meant to close.
Funding remains the sore point. Ribadu acknowledged at the retreat that inadequate resources were a major obstacle and urged universities to raise money through partnerships with the private sector, alumni and development partners, within regulatory limits. He said the commission had secured partnerships with the World Bank, the Agence Française de Développement and the African Development Bank. At the 2026 budget defence in February, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, told lawmakers that ₦966.9 billion of the ₦2.39 trillion earmarked for the education sector was for universities.
Education’s share of the federal budget has long trailed international benchmarks. In 2025, the sector took about 7.3 per cent of the ₦47.9 trillion federal budget, up from 5.5 per cent in 2024. UNESCO recommends that countries commit 15 to 20 per cent of public spending to education.
The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Said Ahmad, who declared the retreat open, said universities could no longer rely on isolated efforts or regulatory directives alone. She told vice-chancellors to show accountability in financial management, procurement, recruitment, promotion, admissions and examinations. She also warned that the adoption of artificial intelligence must come with safeguards for academic integrity, ethics and data protection.
Ribadu made a similar point about technology. He said the commission had deployed the e-NUC platform to automate its entire workflow, but cautioned that digital transformation must go beyond buying hardware and software. Staff training, cybersecurity and clear institutional policies, he said, were just as important.
On research, Ribadu said the commission was setting up a Research Commercialisation Division to protect intellectual property and turn viable findings into marketable products. He said the NUC had launched the ACE Alliance platform to link Nigeria’s 20 African Centres of Excellence and had published a four-volume compendium of their research outputs. He identified agriculture, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, the environment and the creative industry as areas where university research should deliver visible results.
Other changes are under way inside the commission. Ribadu said its Policy Development Strategy Committee had produced Blueprint 2.0 for the Rapid Revitalisation of Nigerian University Education. He added that the NUC was moving from the Annual Performance Evaluation system to a Performance Monitoring System developed by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.
The two-day retreat is themed “Enhancing Regulatory Compliance, Governance, Leadership, and Partnership in the Nigerian University System”. It is expected to end with a communiqué setting out agreed actions, alongside a proposed monitoring mechanism to track whether universities carry them out. The commission has not yet given a date for the start of the post-accreditation visits.