Nigerian Universities get online research platform

Over a 30-year period, Nigeria has lost out in research findings in higher institutions because of a lack of capacity from educators who have been exposed to the diaspora.

 

According to various media reports, Julius Okojie, executive secretary of the National Universities Commission has said that 27 Nigerian universities have been connected to share high sped 10GB core and Internet resources content to advance research findings in the nation’s higher institutions.

According to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, Okojie said the phase first of the installation has already gulped about $10 million (N2.4bn), adding that an additional N28 billion was needed to cover all the universities in the country.

“The focus is to enable online researches in universities and offer efficiencies of unified communications and consolidation of digital content in research and development in line with global demands,” Okojie said.

Okojie, speaking at the West African Research and Education Network (WACREN) workshop on Network Monitoring and Measurement, noted that over a 30-year period, Nigeria has lost out in research findings in higher institutions because of a lack of capacity from educators who have been exposed to the diaspora.

 

“What we are trying to do is to ensure that we intervene through diverse means by ensuring we build capacity of our academics, build infrastructure on ICT to accommodate diverse research methodologies such as video conferencing, teleconferencing, that would bring faster results for collaborative learning between educational institutions within and outside the country,” said Okojie.

 

The Nigerian Research and Education Network was established by the NUC in conjunction with the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities, and with the support of the World Bank-assisted Science and Technology Education Post Basic (Step-B) project to facilitate inter-institutional collaboration, and share access to knowledge across national and international boundaries.