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The Senate Committee on Education on Monday revealed its 'active enga-gement" with the Natio-nal University Commission (NUC) in working out a modality that would make the first generation universities the training ground for postgraduate students only.
The Senate Committee on Education on Monday revealed its 'active enga-gement" with the Natio-nal University Commission (NUC) in working out a modality that would make the first generation universities the training ground for postgraduate students only.
The Committee's acting chairman, Senator Akinlabi Olasunkanmi, who said the measure is aimed at 'orderly development of private universities in order to ensure quality control in academic programmes run by institutions," further said that the postgraduates students would at the end of their training teach the undergraduates at the private universities.
Olasunkanmi, who spoke at the end-of-session interactive session with newsmen, said 'there is the need to licence more private universities because if you don't do that, the experience waiting for us from the UBE programme will not be containable and prosperity will not forgive us if we can't provide space for our primary and secondary students in the universities," Olasunkanmi told reporters who sought to know the consequences of the policy on parents who can't afford the cost of private universities.
He also disclosed that the upper legislative body is set to amend the NECO Act 'to make it function as originally conceived which was to relieve WAEC of the burden of handling too many candidates in its examinations."
He explained that the Committee would embark on the amendment as a relieve measure for the students who see engaged with examinations from May when WAEC starts its examination till December when NECO examinations end.
'We are trying to streamline to see WAEC hold its examination in May/June while NECO holds its examination in November/December since it is the same students that would sit for the two examinations," he added.
Also yesterday, the Senate Committee on Information chairman, Senator Tawar Umbi Wada, said the Senate is moving towards the much needed information required of a parliament in which every process would be automated electronically.
Wada, who stated this while briefing newsmen on the activities of his committee in the last one legislative year in the company of his deputy, Senator Inatimi Rufus-Spiff, said when the project is completed, 'committee meetings can be summoned through e-mail, votes and proceedings as well as order paper could be printed on diskette while voting on the floor of the Senate could also be done through electronic system, transparently and visibly.
In a related development, the Senate Committee on Power and Steel yesterday charged the Federal Govern-ment 'to gradually withdraw from the sector as participant and assume the role of a regulator" that would create enabling environment for competition and improved services.