The Federal Government has announced plans to make participation in Nigeria’s national tertiary education ranking exercise compulsory for all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting with the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee, NURAC.
The committee has now been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee, reflecting the government’s decision to extend the ranking exercise beyond universities.
According to Alausa, the initiative is aimed at improving quality, accountability, institutional performance and the global competitiveness of Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.
He explained that the ranking system would establish measurable benchmarks that institutions could use to assess their performance, identify weaknesses and monitor improvements over time.
The minister said the exercise would also promote healthy competition among institutions and encourage them to improve the quality of education they provide.
“The 2026/2027 ranking exercise for universities would commence in September, while the committee would determine the appropriate timeline for extending the exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education,” Alausa said.
He added that the government would develop guidelines to formally institutionalise the exercise and notify vice-chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions that participation would be mandatory.
The ranking exercise is expected to be funded by the Federal Government through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund.
Alausa said the Federal Ministry of Education would provide the necessary policy direction, funding and capacity-building support to ensure the initiative becomes credible, sustainable and effective.
He also disclosed that the ministry would collaborate with the committee to organise in-service training and institutional capacity-building programmes across tertiary institutions.
According to him, strengthening the capacity of institutions would improve their chances of gaining greater recognition both nationally and internationally.
The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, described the expansion of the ranking framework as an important step towards improving accountability and quality within the tertiary education system.
Ahmad stressed that competition among institutions would encourage them to evaluate their performance, address deficiencies and continually improve.
She further advocated the inclusion of both public and private institutions in the ranking exercise, noting that the system could help establish and sustain minimum standards across the sector.
The chairman of the advisory committee and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Emeritus Prof. Peter Okebukola, said the committee initially approached the minister to commend the administration for the growing presence of Nigerian universities in global rankings.
According to him, the committee had also appealed for increased investment in university education to sustain the progress being recorded.
However, Okebukola said the minister went further by expanding the committee’s mandate to include polytechnics and colleges of education.
The development subsequently transformed NURAC into the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Okebukola expressed confidence that increased investment, stronger institutional capacity and the new national ranking framework would help more Nigerian tertiary institutions improve their positions internationally.
He said the new system would give Nigerian institutions a stronger platform to compete with leading institutions around the world.
The policy comes amid increasing pressure on Nigerian tertiary institutions to improve their standing in international rankings, which often assess institutions based on areas such as research output, academic reputation, citations, international outlook and available resources.
While several Nigerian universities have continued to feature in global rankings, the sector still faces challenges including inadequate funding, weak research capacity, poor infrastructure, staffing shortages and limited resources.
By extending the ranking exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education, the Federal Government is seeking to establish a unified mechanism for measuring performance across the country’s entire tertiary education system.
The compulsory participation also represents a shift from a largely voluntary approach to one where institutions will be required to submit relevant data and measure their performance against nationally established benchmarks.