The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved a seven-year ban on creating new federal universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, saying the focus must now shift to improving the quality of existing institutions.
The decision was reached at the council’s meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu in Abuja. Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, explained that Nigeria’s challenge is no longer about having enough federal tertiary institutions, but about the quality and efficiency of those already in place.
According to him, the proliferation of new schools in recent years has stretched resources thin, leaving many campuses with inadequate facilities and an insufficient number of qualified lecturers. The minister revealed that during the 2024/2025 admission cycle, 199 universities recorded fewer than 100 applicants each, while 34 had no applicants at all. A similar trend was observed in polytechnics and colleges of education, many of which admitted very few—or no—students.
He gave an example of a federal university with fewer than 800 students but over 1,200 staff members, calling it a glaring case of inefficiency and waste.
“This pause will allow us to channel resources into rehabilitating ageing infrastructure, training and recruiting qualified academic staff, and boosting the overall capacity of our existing schools,” Alausa said. “The aim is to make our institutions stronger and ensure that our graduates can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their peers anywhere in the world.”
The moratorium takes effect immediately and will run until 2032, during which the federal government says it will focus on consolidating and upgrading what it already has, rather than expanding for the sake of numbers.
