The federal government has announced plans to make participation in Nigeria’s national tertiary education ranking exercise compulsory for universities, polytechnics and colleges of education across the country.
Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja, during a meeting with members of the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee.
The committee has now been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee to reflect its broader mandate.
Alausa said the new framework is intended to promote quality, accountability and improved institutional performance across Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.
He explained that the ranking system would provide institutions with measurable benchmarks for evaluating their performance, identifying areas of weakness and tracking improvements over time.
Under the new arrangement, universities, polytechnics and colleges of education will eventually be assessed under a coordinated national ranking framework.
The minister said the federal government would support the exercise through funding from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
He disclosed that the 2026/2027 ranking exercise for universities was scheduled to begin in September, while the advisory committee would determine when the process would be extended to polytechnics and colleges of education.
Alausa also said the government would develop guidelines to formally institutionalise the ranking system and communicate the compulsory participation requirement to vice-chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions.
According to him, the policy forms part of the education reforms being pursued under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative.
He said the Federal Ministry of Education would provide policy direction, funding and capacity-building support to strengthen the credibility and sustainability of the exercise.
The minister further said training programmes would be organised to help institutions build the capacity required to participate effectively in the ranking process.
The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, described the expansion as an important step towards improving accountability and quality across the tertiary education system.
She said competition among institutions could encourage them to evaluate their performance, identify shortcomings and take measurable steps towards improvement.
Suwaiba stressed that the ranking framework should cover both public and private institutions, arguing that a comprehensive system would help promote minimum standards across the sector.
She said the exercise would also enable institutions to better understand their strengths and weaknesses while encouraging continuous improvement.
Chairman of the advisory committee and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Emeritus Prof. Peter Okebukola, said the committee’s engagement with the education minister followed a memorandum congratulating the administration on the increasing presence of Nigerian universities in global rankings.
Okebukola said the committee had also advocated increased investment in university education to sustain the progress already recorded.
He noted that the government’s decision went beyond the committee’s original proposal by extending the ranking framework to polytechnics and colleges of education.
This led to the transformation of the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee into the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Okebukola expressed optimism that sustained funding, stronger institutional capacity and the new national framework would enable more Nigerian institutions to improve their standing both nationally and internationally.
Read also:
- How Alausa’s Education Reforms Aim to Build Nigeria’s $1 Trillion Economy
- NSC, Education Ministry Launch N-SEEP To Combine Sports, Education For Nigeria’s Young Talents
- Tinubu Approves Recruitment Of 3,252 PTA Teachers Into Federal Civil Service
The policy comes amid increasing pressure on Nigerian tertiary institutions to improve their academic and research performance.
International rankings typically consider factors including research output, citations, academic reputation, international collaboration and institutional resources, although the criteria differ among ranking organisations.
While several Nigerian universities have recorded improved visibility in international rankings in recent years, institutions across the country continue to face challenges involving funding, infrastructure, research capacity, staffing and other resources.
By extending the national exercise beyond universities, the Federal Government is seeking to create a broader system for measuring institutional performance across Nigeria’s tertiary education landscape.
The compulsory participation requirement will also move the national exercise away from a largely voluntary model, with institutions expected to provide relevant data and assess their performance against nationally established benchmarks.
