National Universities Commission (NUC) said concluded arrangements to introduce anti-plagiarism software in the universities to check academic corruption in the system.
Executive Secretary of the commission, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, said recently in Abuja at a workshop on “Higher Education Reform and Africa Centre of Excellence-Impact”, that there had been several anomalies being perpetrated by academics and non-academics staff in the universities.
Rasheed said particularly, there were malpractices in delay in release of results and transcripts, money for marks and sexual harassment in the system, saying the acts had impacted negatively on the quality of graduates produced by universities.
“Many of our graduates in art, humanities and social sciences cannot construct sensible sentences in paragraphs, while those in science as well as engineering cannot fi t-in after a little training into the challenges of the real life of the industries.
Rasheed stated that the ugly development prompted the commission to set up a committee headed by Prof.
Peter Okebukola, adding that by the end of the year the level of academic corruption would be reduced by 10 per cent.
he executive secretary put the number of students currently studying in Nigerian universities at almost two million.
He pointed out that universities in the country must be reorganised to meet present demands rather than just increase in number.
“In 1948, there were only 210 students in University of Ibadan.
As at December 31, 2017, we have nearly two million students studying in Nigerian universities.
At independence in 1960 to 1962, Nigeria had only five universities, today, we have 162 universities,” Rasheed said.
