Abuja: The Federal Government has made participation in Nigeria’s national tertiary education ranking exercise compulsory for all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education as part of efforts to strengthen quality, accountability, institutional performance and global competitiveness across the education sector.
Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced the policy in Abuja on Monday during a meeting with the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee (NURAC), which has now been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Alausa said the unified ranking framework would provide tertiary institutions with clear benchmarks for assessing their performance, identifying areas requiring improvement and measuring progress over time.
He disclosed that the 2026/2027 ranking exercise for universities will commence in September, while the advisory committee will determine the timeline for extending the exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education.
According to the minister, the government will develop guidelines to institutionalise the ranking exercise and formally communicate the compulsory participation policy to Vice-Chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions.
He added that funding support for the exercise is expected through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, described the initiative as a significant step towards strengthening accountability and improving the quality of Nigeria’s tertiary education system.
Ahmad stressed that the ranking exercise should cover both public and private institutions, noting that healthy competition among institutions would encourage them to assess their strengths and weaknesses, address identified gaps and consistently improve the quality of education they provide.
She said a unified ranking system would also provide institutions with a clearer understanding of where they stand nationally while encouraging them to pursue measurable improvements in teaching, research, infrastructure and other areas of institutional performance.
Chairman of the advisory committee, Emeritus Prof. Peter Okebukola, said the committee’s engagement with the minister followed its call for greater investment in university education to sustain the growing global recognition of Nigerian institutions.
Okebukola welcomed the expansion of the committee’s mandate to cover the wider tertiary education system, expressing optimism that sustained investment, stronger institutional capacity and a unified national ranking framework would enable more Nigerian tertiary institutions to compete confidently with leading institutions globally.
The Federal Government said the initiative is expected to create a more structured system for measuring institutional performance while promoting continuous improvement across Nigeria’s universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.