Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Barrister Abdul-Raheem Adebayo Shittu has declared that the proposed first Information and Communications Technology (ICT), University in Nigeria will have only 30% admission opportunities for undergraduate students.
The Minister, however, informed that the remaining 70% will be the training and retraining of graduates in courses such as Post Graduate Diplomas, Masters degrees and Doctorate degree programs.
Shittu made these disclosures while speaking at a Media Chart organised by South West Group of Online Publishers (SWEGOP) held on Saturday in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
He said that the university to which some people have kicked against its establishment considering the number of existing universities that are still struggling to compete with their peers in other parts of the world, would be free to operate on its own phase and free from government bureaucratic bottleneck.
Shittu who remarked that the university will provide opportunities for training and re-training of thousands of unemployed graduates, youths, government workers, agencies, departments, security agents and experts, policy makers and other ICT users would be tailored to compete favourably with its peers that are already existing and working in countries such as China and Norway.
He then informed that the university which will have campuses in all the six geo-political zones of the country will be run on Public Private Partnership arrangement.
He said that one of the reasons the need arose for the establishment of the ICT university separate and to be run independently of the existing ones is that the ministry and the entire ICT industry does not have control over any of the existing universities, its faculties or departments.