The National Universities Commission (NUC), in its weekly bulletin issued on Tuesday, January 11, in Abuja condemned the employment embargo put in place by the government, stating that there is currently a shortage of teaching staff in universities across the country.

According to the NUC, there are currently only 100,000 teaching staff members who have to attend to over 2.1 million students in over 200 Nigerian universities. The commission urged the federal government to exempt universities from the embargo on new employment to enable the institutions to recruit additional lecturers.

The commission further explained that there was a need for universities to be isolated from the Federal Government’s employment embargo because of the unique and distinctive nature of their jobs, in order for them to keep up the pace in attaining comparable standards with their counterparts globally.