On the academic side of gist, the executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof Julius Okojie has suspended part-time programmes in Nigerian universities.

This new development he made public yesterday in Abuja while announcing the accreditation of National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN. He says that the move was aimed at rationalizing the activities as well as bringing them in line with best practices and to ensure standards.

He said, “for now all part-time programmes are suspended, we are going to streamline them. In the effect, we should not have more than 20 per cent of the total students’ population on part-time programmes. “All part-time programmes must be located on campus, we don’t want satellite campuses again”.

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The reasons for suspending the part-time programmes he said included illegal operations by some of the institutions and over-bloated population in the admission process among others.

He  stated that when the ban was lifted, admission into part-time programme would not exceed 20 per cent intake, and added that lectures for all part-time programmes would be restricted to university campuses only.