The Federal Government has expanded Nigeria’s national tertiary education ranking framework to include universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, making participation compulsory for all tertiary institutions across the country.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, announced the development in Abuja during a meeting with the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee (NURAC), whose mandate has now been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Alausa said the initiative formed part of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s education reforms under the Renewed Hope Agenda and was being implemented through the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative (NESRI).
According to him, the expanded ranking framework is designed to strengthen quality, accountability, institutional performance and global competitiveness across Nigeria’s tertiary education system.
He explained that the exercise would provide institutions with clear benchmarks to assess their performance, identify areas requiring improvement and measure progress, while promoting healthy competition and continuous institutional advancement.
The minister announced that the 2026/2027 ranking exercise for universities would commence in September, adding that the committee would determine an appropriate timeline for extending the exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education.
He said the Federal Government would support the initiative with funding through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), while guidelines would also be developed to institutionalise the ranking exercise.
Alausa further disclosed that vice-chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions would be formally notified that participation in the ranking process was compulsory.
Speaking at the meeting, the Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Sa’id Ahmad, described the initiative as a major step towards strengthening accountability and quality across Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.
She said healthy competition among institutions was necessary to encourage them to assess their performance, address identified gaps and continuously improve the quality of education they offer.
Professor Ahmad stressed that both public and private tertiary institutions should be covered by the exercise, noting that the ranking framework would provide a mechanism for establishing and maintaining minimum standards across the sector.
She assured the committee of the ministry’s support, adding that the exercise would enable institutions to better understand their strengths and weaknesses while driving measurable improvements.
Also speaking, Chairman of the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Emeritus Professor Peter Okebukola, said the committee’s engagement with the minister followed a memorandum congratulating the Tinubu administration on the growing global recognition of Nigerian universities.
Okebukola said the committee had also called for increased investment in university education to accelerate the progress recorded by Nigerian institutions.
He noted that the minister’s response went beyond the committee’s initial proposal, leading to the expansion of its mandate to include polytechnics and colleges of education.
The committee, he said, would consequently be transformed into the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
Okebukola expressed optimism that sustained investment, improved institutional capacity and the new national ranking framework would enable more Nigerian tertiary institutions to make significant progress in international rankings and compete with leading institutions globally.
Reaffirming the ministry’s commitment, Alausa pledged that the Federal Ministry of Education would provide the policy direction, funding and capacity-building support needed to make the ranking exercise credible, sustainable and impactful.
He added that the ministry would work with the committee to facilitate in-service training and institutional capacity-building programmes across tertiary institutions, with the expectation that more Nigerian institutions would gain greater global recognition in future international ranking exercises.
