THE National Universities Commission (NUC) says it is planning a framework that would make all university undergraduates pass through an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training.
This, the Commission said would bridge the gap in ICT among university graduates.
Chairman of ICT Development Committee in NUC, Johnson Asinugo, gave the indication at an interactive session between the Directors of ICT of all Nigerian universities and committee of the NUC board in Abuja.
Asinugo said there was no reason why universities should graduate students who are computer illiterates.
“Part of what we are trying to do now is to establish a framework where all Nigerian university graduates or students, regardless of the department they apply to, would pass through an ICT training phase.”
According to him, if the university system computerizes its environment sufficiently, most of the problems such as the issue of getting transcript will go away.
He blamed the difficulty of retrieving transcripts for students who swap courses on the management of paper work, stating that in a computerized environment the processes are more lenient, transparent and movement of information from one point to another is seamless.
He noted that if things work out as the commission is envisioning, the universities would laptops available for the students at a discounted cost.
Also speaking, NUC’s Director of Research, Innovation and Information Technology, Dr. Suleiman Raymond-Yusuf, said ICT development will ensure a robust data center that would facilitate easy certificate verification and access to transcript by graduates of the universities.
“By the time we finish this process, it should be a thing of the past for any Nigerian university to be unable to use ICT to resolve these issues,” Raymond-Yusuf said.
He said in today’s world, ICT is driving and shaping everything so universities need to know what is required and are able to put in place structures as well as capacity to drive the education using appropriate ICT tools.