The Academic Staff Union Universities (ASUU) has criticised the Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS) recently introduced by the National Universities Commission (NUC).
Based on the law establishing it, the university regulatory agency is empowered by Section 10(1) of the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions) Act, Cap E3, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, to set the minimum standards for all universities and other degree awarding institutions in Nigeria, and conduct the accreditation of their degrees and other academic awards.
However, in what it described as an imposition, ASUU said NUC failed to carry along relevant organs of the university system. It said the new benchmark was imposed on the institutions and called for an urgent review.
The union further described NUC’s action as an “aberration to the Nigerian University System.”
In a statement issued on Friday and signed by its President, Emmanuel Osodeke, a professor of Soil Science, noted that NUC should accept proposed innovations from the universities “instead of the top-to-bottom model used for the CCMAS.”
The statement reads in part, “NUC should encourage universities, as currently being done by the University of Ibadan, to propose innovations for the review of their programmes. Proposals from across universities should then be sieved and synthesised by more competent expert teams to review the existing BMAS documents and, or create new ones as appropriate.
ASUU said the process adopted by NUC amounts to encroaching on the powers of the Senate of universities.
“It is inexplicable that the National Universities Commission’s (NUC) pre-packaged 70 per cent CCMAS contents are being imposed on the Nigerian University System (NUS), leaving university Senates, which are statutorily responsible for academic programme development, to work on only 30 per cent,” the union said.
