Nigeria’s universities are about to face a new phase in the race for quality and global recognition. But this time, they will not be alone.
Polytechnics and colleges of education are also being brought into the picture as the Federal Government moves to make participation in the country’s national tertiary education ranking exercise compulsory.
The new policy represents a major expansion of Nigeria’s approach to measuring the performance of tertiary institutions, shifting the focus beyond universities to create a unified framework for assessing universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced the development on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting with the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee.
The committee itself has now been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee, reflecting its new responsibility for the broader tertiary education sector.
According to Alausa, the ranking framework is expected to strengthen quality, accountability, institutional performance and global competitiveness across Nigerian tertiary institutions.
Rather than simply placing institutions on a list from first to last, the government says the exercise will provide schools with benchmarks for assessing their performance, identifying areas that need improvement and measuring their progress over time.
The ranking is also expected to encourage healthy competition among institutions.
Under the new arrangement, universities, polytechnics and colleges of education will operate under a unified national ranking framework, with the Federal Government expected to fund the exercise through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
For universities, the 2026/2027 ranking exercise is scheduled to begin in September. The advisory committee will determine the appropriate timeline for extending the exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education.
One major change, however, is that participation will no longer be optional.
Alausa said the government would develop guidelines to formally institutionalise the ranking exercise and communicate to vice-chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions that participation was compulsory.
The policy forms part of President Bola Tinubu’s education reforms under the Renewed Hope Agenda and is being implemented through the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative.
The Minister also promised that the Federal Ministry of Education would provide policy direction, funding and capacity-building support to ensure that the ranking system remains credible, sustainable and impactful.
He added that the ministry would work with the advisory committee to support in-service training and institutional capacity-building programmes, with the goal of helping more Nigerian institutions gain international recognition.
The Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Ahmad, described the initiative as an important step towards improving accountability and quality across Nigeria’s tertiary education system.
According to her, competition could push institutions to take a closer look at their strengths and weaknesses and address areas where improvement is needed.
She also insisted that the ranking should cover both public and private institutions, creating a broader mechanism for maintaining minimum standards across the rapidly expanding tertiary education sector.
For Emeritus Professor Peter Okebukola, chairman of the advisory committee and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, the expansion of the ranking exercise goes beyond what the committee initially proposed.
Okebukola explained that the committee had engaged the Minister after observing the growing number of Nigerian universities gaining recognition in international rankings and calling for greater investment in university education.
However, the government’s response expanded the idea beyond universities, leading to the transformation of the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee into the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.
The development comes at a time when Nigerian tertiary institutions are under increasing pressure to improve their performance locally and globally.
International university rankings often consider factors such as research output, academic reputation, citations, international outlook and institutional resources.
While more Nigerian universities have recently appeared in global rankings, many institutions still struggle with challenges including inadequate funding, weak research capacity, poor infrastructure and staffing shortages.
By extending the national ranking exercise to polytechnics and colleges of education, the Federal Government appears to be sending a broader message: the push for quality and competitiveness should not be limited to universities.
The compulsory nature of the exercise also means tertiary institutions will increasingly be expected to provide relevant data and measure their performance against nationally defined standards.
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