FEC okays 6 private universities

THE Federal Executive Council (FEC), on Wednesday, approved six new private universities bringing the total of such institutions in the country to 74.

Briefing State House correspondents after the Council meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the Minister Education, Adamu Adamu, listed the new universities as Admiralty University, Ibusa Delta State, Spiritan University, Nneochi, Abia; Precious Cornerstone University, Ibadan; Pamo University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt;  Atiba University, Oyo State and Eko University of Medical and Health Sciences, Lagos.

The approval followed a memo presented to FEC by the Education Minister who said: “Today the Ministry of Education presented a memo for the approval of six new private universities and they were approved.

“There are some more applications and I believe we will still bring more for Council approvals.

“The NUC is going to take the issue of accreditation very seriously and if any university fails to meet their standard, we are going to deregister their courses and if enough courses are deregistered, it will lead to the closure of the University.”

On the strike embarked upon by non-teaching staff unions in the universities under the umbrella of Joint Action Committee (JAC), Adamu said the issues in contention had been thrashed out.

Responding to a question on why the Federal Government had not fulfilled its obligations to the unions, he stated: “As far as I know, we had sat down with the unions, we met and these issues had been thrashed out. I don’t know that there was a problem that rose later because I travelled out of the country and came back yesterday (Tuesday).

“But as far as I am concerned, these things had been addressed before I left and the formula that was used to share the money was agreed by them.

“They sat down with the officials in the Ministry of Education and agreed. So, the money was not for ASUU alone, it was for all the unions.”

On the issue of salary shortfall, Adamu said, “The shortfall in salary is being addressed. On the teachers of staff schools, it will certainly take time. The government has accepted the court verdict that says they should be reinstated and they will be reinstated.

“I think the only issue before I left was that they will be in salary relevant to what they are doing. They are not university staff. So, they will just be receiving normal salaries like the grade level they get.”

Also speaking, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, said he briefed Council on President Muhammadu Buhari last week’s visits to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and Jordan and the federal government’s most recent decision on Libya slave trade.

He said: “On the issue of Libya, of course, it has been in the news in the last two weeks on trading in slaves; also the imprisonment in various detention centres of Nigerians.

“What we’ve done is that first of all, we’ve got our Charge D’ Affairs in Tripoli to come to Abuja to give us the full details of what is actually going on there.

“How many Nigerians are in detention and are trying to come home, So, once we establish that and we are given all those facts, we are now meeting with various agencies like NEMA and NAPTIP to now arrange the evacuation process and this will be done in coordination with International Organization for Migration (IOM), and see if we can very quickly repatriate all our Nigerian nationals who are there who want to return home.

“The Charge d’Affairs said a number of Nigerians (and not all of them) do not want to come home. Certainly, it has to be those who want to come back home.”