Ban on new Nigerian universities ‘will improve education quality’

A ban on the establishment of new universities in Nigeria will allow the government to improve the quality of education and increase student numbers at existing tertiary institutions, according to the country’s education minister. 

Speaking to Times Higher Education, Tunji Alausa said the West African nation had “overbuilt” universities in recent years. 

The government first imposed a seven-year ban on the establishment of new public tertiary institutions in August 2025, before extending it to private providers in March 2026. 

“We have so many of these universities, both public and private, with very significantly reduced utilisation,” Alausa said. “So why do you continue to build when the utilisation in some of these universities is less than 10 per cent?”

When the suspension was first announced, the minister noted that many institutions were operating far below their capacity, including one university that had 1,200 staff and less than 800 students. 

Meanwhile, the creation of new public institutions in recent years has led to funding challenges, with some universities left unable to pay their electricity bills. 

“Some of these universities, we also find out that they don’t have enough infrastructure to support high-quality education,” said Alausa, adding that the policy would help “improve quality at these universities”. 

Despite the ban on local institutions, the government is encouraging the establishment of foreign branch campuses in Nigeria, as well as transnational education (TNE) partnerships with local institutions.

Nigeria released new TNE guidelines in 2023, while foreign universities were given the green light to apply to establish campuses in the country at the end of 2025. 

The UK’s Coventry University has confirmed it is considering establishing operations in Nigeria, while others explore joint programmes. Last year, the University of Dundee launched a joint master’s of law with the University of Lagos, while the University of Birmingham has also committed to a partnership with the same institution.

Alausa said foreign branch campuses are part of the government’s strategy to “improve capacity and quality” in higher education, and that his department has been “very open and very willing” to move forwards with TNE partnerships.

He said these initiatives would “improve the capacity of our lecturers” and “give Nigerians the opportunity to get a university education from world-renowned institutions in Nigeria without travelling out of the country”.

Another priority for the Nigerian government is upskilling graduates to secure jobs in the face of the disruption caused by artificial intelligence (AI). 

“The way our higher education has been designed is to give people degrees and then after they get these degrees go look for jobs,” Alausa said. “Those jobs are not there. We’ve seen how AI has eliminated a lot of jobs.”

The government recently launched a new programme to provide students with entrepreneurship training alongside their degree courses, including piloting an entrepreneurship, innovation and business incubation certification at 14 universities. The programme launched in March and is planned to expand to all federal universities by 2027. 

“We don’t want to train [students] to be jobseekers because there are not enough jobs out there,” Alausa said. 

He added that the programme had already run at the University of Lagos for five years with “good results”.

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com