ASUU and Chris Piwuna

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has praised the Federal Government’s decision to impose a seven-year moratorium on the creation of new federal tertiary institutions. The union, which has long criticized the proliferation of universities without proper planning and funding, described the move as a positive step toward restoring quality in Nigeria’s higher education sector.

Government’s Decision on New Federal Universities

Minister of Education Tunji Alausa announced last week that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) had approved the ban on establishing new federal universities. According to him, over 200 bills seeking to create new universities are currently before the National Assembly, a situation that has stretched the country’s educational resources thin.

Mr. Alausa noted that the issue is no longer about access to tertiary education but about managing the proliferation of institutions, which has worsened infrastructure decay and diluted academic standards.

ASUU Reacts and Calls for Stricter Control

In a statement signed by its President, Professor Christopher Piwuna, ASUU welcomed the policy, emphasizing that the union had warned against the dangers of uncontrolled university expansion for over a decade.

“For more than 10 years, our union has cried aloud on the harmful effects of establishing mushroom universities that the government has no plans to develop,” the statement read.
“Universities have become compensation for political patronage, leading to a situation where some institutions now have zero admissions.”

However, ASUU criticized the government for approving nine new private universities shortly after declaring that access was not the main challenge.

“If we agree that access is no longer an issue, why is the NUC giving more licenses to private universities? Education must be tightly regulated to ensure quality, not treated as a profit-making venture,” ASUU stated.

Call for a Comprehensive Moratorium

ASUU argued that a similar ban should apply to private institutions, warning that spreading scarce resources over an ever-growing number of universities is “meaningless and wasteful.”