By Kuni Tyessi
The National Universities Commission (NUC) has begun the headcount of academic, non-academic staff, programmes and courses in the nation’s universities with a view to streamlining data for effective management of the system.
The data collation would also involve lecturers in all cadres including professors and courses of study in the Nigerian university system (NUS).
The Executive Secretary of the commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, who told newsmen Wednesday, in Abuja, at the opening of a one-day meeting of directors of academic planning in the universities, said the move is to enable the commission have accurate data for the system.
He said: “This data would include enrolment in the universities, how many students are in the system, how many are studying what programme, how many students are female or male, how many are doing engineering.

“We are also interested in getting a data on the lecturers, how many of them are in the system, who and who is doing one thing or the other, how many of them have Ph.D degree and how many of them are trainee academics.
“We are also interested in getting the data about the non-teaching staff, whether they are in the administration or finance. So, we are interested in data in planning the university system for growth.
“Without planning, there cannot be development. So this meeting would have to approve templates for universities and I hope within the next four weeks, we would be able to publish it online and hard copies for distribution around the world.”
Rasheed, however, said professors, who are not in the core academic practice, would not be captured in this exercise.
“Those who are on sabbaticals in the public service would be captured, but those who are not would not be detailed in the data,” he added.
