Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Tuesday received the certificates for the two newly established universities from the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC) Prof Abubakar Rasheed.
The NUC issued letters of recognition to the Lagos State Government for the establishment of the two new specialised universities as approved by the Lagos State Assembly.
Sanwo-Olu had signed bills converting Lagos State Polytechnic
to the University of Technology and Adeniran Ogunsanya to the University of Education.
The Governor said the upgrade becomes necessary to meet the growing demands of the State.
He said: “Lagos has the largest economy in the whole of Africa. But unfortunately Lagos today has only one state university that was given to us about 39 years ago. So, we are happy to come to NUC today to pick two brand new university approvals for the people of Lagos State.”
He noted that his administration had invested extensively in the existing institutions that have been upgraded with one of them having over 60 Ph.D. lecturers while their infrastructures are being developed aggressively.
“We believe that the approval to have Lagos State Polytechnic turned to University of Science and Technology, will bring about innovations in engineering, science, inventions, and things that would bring development to our country and state,” he said.
The executive secretary of NUC dismissed claims of the proliferation of universities in Nigeria, insisting that Nigeria with over 200 million citizens requires more universities to cater for the tertiary education needs.
He noted that Nigeria currently has an enrolment of two million students in the existing 200 universities, saying this was quite low when compared to the number of candidates who seek admissions into universities annually.
