Unauthorised courses: FG warns universities of agric, technology

Federal Government has directed that all specialised universities are to stick to their core mandates they were set up to carry and desist from running programmes that have no bearing with their foundation.

Specialised universities are set up to pursue specific courses/programmes to steer the need of manpower in a particular sector of the economy. Some of these institutions include universities of agric, universities of technologies, universities of medicine, among others.

The Federal Government in a statement observed that these institutions had derailed from their statutory responsibility thereby running programmes that were antithetical to their mandates. The government noted as unfortunate the situation were universities of agriculture offer programmes in law, management courses such as accounting, banking and finance, business administration, among others.

As if that was not enough, some institutions change the nomenclature of some of the courses to read, for instance, banking engineering, accounting technology, among other names. This is an aberration and should be stopped with immediate effect, according to the government.

In view of this ugly development, Adamu Adamu, minister of education, in the statement directed the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to delete all such courses on its portal and all candidates desirous of sitting for the 2017 Universities Tertiary Matriculations Examination were advised not to be hoodwinked into such programmes as they were illegal and not provided for in the brochure.

JAMB in the statement said it had not commenced the sales of the 2017 UTME application forms, warning, “Candidates are urged to exercise patience as

JAMB is putting final preparations towards commencing the sales. The delay has been occasioned by the Board’s desire to reduce to the barest minimum challenges associated with the conduct of the Board’s examination.

“However, in the final analysis, Nigerians should note that admissions will be conducted within the stipulated timeline.”