A prison inmate will soon enroll for a PhD
programme in the National Open University
of Nigeria (NOUN), the institution’s Vice-
Chancellor, Prof. Abdalla Adamu has said.
Adamu disclosed this in his address at the
opening ceremony of the 53rd Meeting and
30th Anniversary of the Committee of Deans
of Post-Graduate Schools (CDPGS) in
Nigerian Universities on Monday in Abuja.
According to Abdalla, prison inmates and
juvenile who are willing and qualified are
given free education as part of NOUN’s
corporate social responsibility.
“We have 84 study centres including the
prisons; NOUN is the only university that
allows prison inmates completely totally free
education because that is the opportunity
they have to learn.
“Right now, we have somebody who has
finished his Masters and he is about to
embark on PhD and he is still behind bars.
“We have juvenile-young people who one
reason or the other are caught up and
locked up.
“NOUN is the largest university in the West
African sub-region and one of the biggest in
the world with over 200, 000 students.’’
Adamu urged the committee to fashion out a
mechanism for improving the global ranking
of Nigerian universities.
The vice-chancellor regretted that Nigerian
academics hardly uploaded their research
content; hence the poor online visibility of
Nigerian universities.
Adamu said that unless a university
established a strong online presence, it
would not be ranked.
He said that NOUN complied with the
National Universities Commission (NUC)’s
guidelines and had all its programme duly
accredited and wondered why the
institution’s products were denied post
graduate admission.
“Part of the major steps taken by the
university management when I assumed
office as vice-chancellor was to bring all our
programmes in tandem with the regulatory
ambience of NUC.
“With that, therefore, it would be unfair for
any institution under the supervision of the
same commission to deny recognition of
NOUN certificates and deny our products
opportunities for post-graduate studies.
“I therefore urge you to draw attention to all
the deans in your respective faculties to this
challenge faced by our products in their
pursuit of post-graduate studies,’’ he said.
In his address, Dr Samiala Mande, Dean,
School of Post-Graduate Studies, NOUN, said
there was need for Nigerian universities to
catch up with modern methods of teaching
and research.
He listed some of the challenges confronting
post-graduate studies as dearth of research
grants, quality of graduates, quality of
instructional content, limited availability of
PhD holders to recruit, among others.
Mande said that NOUN encountered
difficulties in sending transcripts of post-
graduate applicants to other universities.
“Even when the transcripts are sent, some
post-graduate schools are said not to have a
proper documentation process to account
for transcripts received.
“The implication of this is that NOUN incurs
more cost in the process of having to resend
such transcripts.
“Furthermore, there are times when as a
result of a deadline, there is the urgent need
to send a transcript by at least email.
“Unfortunately, many schools of post-
graduate studies do not have functional,
institutional email addresses,’’ he said.
No fewer than 28 deans of schools of post-
graduate studies in Nigerian universities
attended the meeting.
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