The Federal Government has made participation in Nigeria’s national tertiary education ranking exercise mandatory for universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, expanding the assessment framework beyond universities for the first time.

The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced the policy on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting with the Nigerian Universities Ranking Advisory Committee (NURAC).

The committee has consequently been expanded and renamed the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee to reflect its broader mandate.

Alausa said the unified ranking system was intended to promote quality, accountability, institutional performance and global competitiveness across Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.

He said the exercise would give institutions measurable benchmarks for evaluating their performance, identifying weaknesses and tracking improvements, while encouraging healthy competition among them.

According to the minister, the 2026/2027 ranking exercise for universities will begin in September, while the newly constituted committee will determine when the assessment will be extended to polytechnics and colleges of education.

He said the government would develop guidelines to formalise the exercise and notify vice-chancellors and heads of other tertiary institutions that participation would be compulsory.

The minister added that the Federal Government would finance the exercise through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, while the Ministry of Education would provide policy direction, funding and capacity-building support.

Alausa said the initiative formed part of President Bola Tinubu’s education reforms under the Renewed Hope Agenda and the Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative.

He also said the ministry would collaborate with the committee to provide in-service training and institutional capacity-building programmes aimed at improving the performance of tertiary institutions and increasing their visibility in global rankings.

The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, described the policy as an important step towards strengthening accountability and maintaining quality standards across the sector.

She said the ranking would allow institutions to identify their strengths and weaknesses and encourage them to address gaps in their operations.

Ahmad stressed that both public and private institutions should be covered by the exercise to ensure that minimum standards are maintained across the tertiary education system.

Chairman of the ranking advisory committee and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Emeritus Prof. Peter Okebukola, said the committee’s meeting with the minister followed a memorandum congratulating the administration on the increasing number of Nigerian universities appearing in international rankings.

Okebukola said the committee had also advocated increased investment in university education to sustain the progress recorded.

He noted that the government went beyond the committee’s initial proposal by extending the ranking mandate to polytechnics and colleges of education, leading to the transformation of NURAC into the Nigerian Tertiary Education Ranking Advisory Committee.

He expressed optimism that sustained funding, stronger institutional capacity and the new national framework would enable more Nigerian tertiary institutions to improve their standing internationally.

The policy comes amid growing pressure on Nigerian tertiary institutions to improve their performance in global rankings, which typically consider factors such as research output, citations, academic reputation, international outlook and institutional resources.

While more Nigerian universities have gained places in international rankings, challenges including inadequate funding, infrastructure deficits, limited research capacity and staffing constraints continue to affect their global competitiveness.

The expansion of the national ranking system is expected to create a coordinated mechanism for assessing the performance of institutions across the tertiary education sector and shift participation from a voluntary process to a compulsory national exercise.