The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Julius Okojie, a professor, disclosed this at a meeting he held with evaluators of the ACE project on Thursday in Abuja.
He said that the project is aimed at meeting the demand for excellence in African universities, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.
Okojie said that 27 proposals from universities in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Senegal, were selected for the final evaluation stage, adding that 15 of them are from Nigeria.
He said that at the take-off of the programme, each centre would receive a grant of eight million dollars from the World Bank.
According to him, proposals that are not shortlisted by the World Bank’s evaluators would be fine-tuned and submitted to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund to be considered for local funding.
He assured the evaluators of the Nigerian government’s commitment to the development of universities in line with global best practices.
“The Federal Government will do all within its power to stabilise its relationship with all stakeholders in the education sector.
“Let me assure you that there is a strong government support and commitment to the success of the Centres of Excellence that would emerge from Nigeria,” he stated.
He said the government was willing to collaborate with other regional governments to establish a strong regional higher education policy, as well as build capacity that could be shared by them.
Okojie said tele-medicine and simulation methods of teaching were being considered for medical schools in Nigeria.
Earlier, Joshua Atta, the NUC coordinator of ACE, said the meeting was called to discuss awareness and support from key government agencies.
He said it would also discussed stability and predictability of government’s policy concerning risk associated with the proposed ACE, as well as government and stakeholders’ ability to avoid disruptions to teaching and research.
The ACE project is an initiative of the World Bank aimed at developing regional higher education to promote regional specialisation among participating universities.
It is to strengthen the capacities of the universities to deliver high quality training and applied research.
Atta said the project would contribute to the strengthening natural sciences, hard sciences, life sciences and applied associated disciplines in the best of African universities
He added that by Oct. 28, the Steering Committee would meet in Dakar to take final decisions on the institutions to be recommended to the World Bank for final approval.
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