Nigeria’s University Boom Without Pattern or Consistency?

Nigeria’s University Boom Without Pattern or Consistency?

By Bagudu Mohammed

There is a quiet revolution sweeping through Nigeria’s higher education landscape, and it is as intriguing as it is confounding. The specialized university, once conceived as a focused temple of expertise, is fast becoming a multiversity in disguise.

Across the country, universities of technology, agriculture, education and health sciences are diversifying with remarkable speed, running programmes far beyond their founding mandates to strengthen capacity, boost patronage, ensure survival and respond to a restless student market. It is a trend that tells a deeper story about institutional adaptation and state inconsistency.

Consider the storm that greeted the Federal University of Technology, Minna. When news broke that FUT Minna was preparing to establish professional programmes in medicine, pharmacy, nursing and allied health sciences, the excitement was electric. On social media, many hailed it as long overdue, a relief for thousands of candidates in the North Central desperate for medical spaces.

Yet almost immediately, a counter-chorus rose. Critics cried aberration, arguing that a university of technology was losing focus, that it should first change its name to university of science and technology before dabbling in scalpels and stethoscopes. It was that debate that forced my intervention in an essay titled “When Technology Meets Medicine: The FUT Minna Debate.”

At the heart of that debate was a timeless question: is a university defined by its birth certificate or by its becoming? Those who opposed diversification quoted a moral maxim that a wrong repeatedly done does not make it right, insisting that technology universities must remain technology-focused. Their argument was not frivolous, because it had state backing.

In January 2017, then Minister of Education Mallam Adamu Adamu issued a decisive ban on unauthorized courses in specialized universities, directing institutions to stick to their founding mandates. He was particularly critical of universities of agriculture drifting into law, accounting, banking and finance and business administration, describing the practice as an aberration that should stop with immediate effect, and directing JAMB to delete such programmes from its portal.

To many, that pronouncement sounded final. Yet higher education, as scholars have long argued, refuses to be caged. Clark Kerr’s theory of the multiversity reminds us that the modern university is not a single, tidy community but an adaptive organism, constantly reshaping itself in response to societal pressure. Burton Clark, in his work on the entrepreneurial university, showed how institutions survive not by clinging to statutes but by innovating around them.

Around the world, the evidence is compelling. Imperial College London, once narrowly devoted to science and technology, now boasts a world-renowned business school and humanities departments. Wageningen University in the Netherlands, famous for agriculture, houses a thriving faculty of social sciences. Even polytechnics in South Africa and the United Kingdom have evolved to embrace humanities, commerce and law-related programmes. FUT Minna, in that global context, was not committing heresy; it was following an evolutionary logic.

What makes the Nigerian case fascinating and troubling is not diversification itself, but the contradiction at the centre of state policy. The same government that once banned specialized universities from straying is now breeding specialized universities at an astonishing pace, even while lamenting their low patronage.

In August 2025, the Federal Government announced a seven-year moratorium on new federal tertiary institutions. The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, explained with brutal candour that Nigeria had a proliferation problem. Existing institutions were underutilized, understaffed and grappling with declining quality. Some universities, he revealed, had substantial staff establishments but paraded less than a hundred applicants through JAMB.

At that time, official data showed 199 universities receiving fewer than 100 JAMB applications, 34 universities recording zero applications, polytechnics with fewer than 99 applicants, and 64 colleges of education with zero applicants. The diagnosis was clear: creating more institutions would not improve access if existing ones were starved of funding, students and staff.

Yet barely months before and after that declaration, the Federal Government was approving a new wave of federal universities, and an overwhelming majority of them were narrowly specialized. From 2021 onwards, according to the National Universities Commission, Nigeria established the Federal University of Technology in Ikot Abasi and Babura, Federal Universities of Health Sciences in Azare, Ila-Orangun, Kwale and Katsina, the David Nweze Umahi Federal University of Medical Sciences in Uburu, the Federal University of Transportation in Daura, Admiralty University in Ibusa, the African Aviation and Aerospace University in Abuja, the National University of Science and Technology in Abuja, Federal Universities of Agriculture in Bassam-Biri, Mubi, Okeho and Obio-Akpa.

Also, Federal Universities of Education in Zaria, Owerri, Kano, Ondo, Abeokuta, Pankshin, Kontagora and Ijagun, the Federal University of Allied Health Sciences in Enugu, the University of Maritime Studies in Oron, and more recently the Federal University of Environment and Technology in Tai, Federal University of Applied Sciences in Kachia, Federal University of Agriculture and Developmental Studies in Iragbiji, Federal University of Technology and Environmental Studies in Iyin-Ekiti, Federal University of Health Science and Technology in Tsafe, and Federal Universities of Science and Technology in Epe and Kabo, among others.

The irony is unmistakable. A government that acknowledged low enrolment and threatened to enforce discipline is simultaneously creating institutions that, by design, are likely to struggle to attract large numbers. A university dedicated solely to transportation, to aviation, to environment, or to maritime studies, however noble its purpose, cannot survive on its narrow catchment alone.

Sooner or later, as institutional isomorphism theory predicts, it will face mimetic pressure to copy comprehensive universities and begin running management, social sciences and other high-demand professional courses just to fill its classrooms and justify its wage bill. We have seen this movie before, and enforcement reports by The Guardian as late as August 2023 showed that despite the 2017 ban, many specialized universities continued to offer programmes outside their mandates, suggesting that regulation had not achieved its objective.

This is no longer simply about having universities. It is about having students. Nigeria’s population is growing, but so is the competition for those students. Apart from the National Open University with its flexible model, many tertiary institutions now run distance learning, night classes, weekend programmes, and aggressive promotional campaigns with catchy slogans to woo candidates. In that market, a hyper-specialized university is structurally disadvantaged.

There is also the quiet but profound conversion of polytechnics and colleges of education into universities without a clear philosophical compass. When news broke that Kaduna Polytechnic had been converted to a university by presidential assent, a netizen commented wryly that with time polytechnics would cease to exist in Nigeria. That comment captures a deeper anxiety. If we convert every polytechnic to a university and every college of education to a university of education, what becomes of the middle-level manpower that the economy desperately needs? What becomes of the diploma and the NCE holder in an economy already haunted by graduate unemployment?

Let us be clear. The argument is not against specialized universities, nor against diversification. Diversification is legitimate survival strategy, and as resource dependence theory teaches us, institutions will seek new programmes when their environment no longer guarantees resources. The argument is against policy inconsistency without pattern.

What is the national philosophy that says we need a whole university for transportation, graduating students en masse in related courses, when transportation could be a robust faculty within an existing university? Which government agency or private sector is waiting to absorb all those graduates at once? This is the same government that once contemplated scrapping certain courses because of high unemployment.

Nigeria’s university boom, therefore, presents a paradox of abundance and scarcity. We are producing more universities but not necessarily more education, more certificates but not necessarily more skills, more specialized nomenclatures but less specialization in practice. Until we develop a coherent policy that defines when a polytechnic should become a university, when a specialized university should diversify, and when the nation should instead strengthen faculties within existing universities, we will continue to build institutions that must contradict their own founding logic to survive.

Bagudu Mohammed is the founder of Alternative Perspectives, a widely read commentary platform on social media, and writes a weekly newspaper column published every Monday on the back page of Peoples Daily.Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com