The National Universities Commission (NUC) of Nigeria on Friday said that it suspended Medical laboratory science courses for the 2015/2016 academic session to enable it take stock of the programme.
The NUC Director of Academic Standards, Dr Gidado kumo, gave the explanation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
NAN recalls that students, who sought to apply for the discipline in 2015/2016 academic year, complained that it was not listed by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Kumo said that JAMB removed the course from its website for 2015/2016 session in compliance with an NUC directive.
According to him, the NUC has numerous unresolved problems with the Medical Laboratory Science and the Medical Laboratory Council.
“We decided as a commission whose responsibility it is to oversee all the programmes to stop the programmes and take stock of the activities of the programmes and the council across Nigerian university system.
He described as illegal the directive from the council for the establishment of Medical Laboratory Science faculties.
Kumo said that Medical Laboratory Science should be a department within the faculty of basic medical sciences in the Colleges of Health Sciences.
According to him, government may not have the capacity to fund these faculties as proposed because it will amount to duplication and extra cost for government.
“In addition, the council further went ahead to produce a new curriculum and circulated to universities for adoption which was clearly outside the jurisdiction of the council.
“Not forgetting also that in 2008, there were many universities running this programme without the approval of NUC; some of them were run in institutes.
He said that a comprehensive auditing of the programmes were conducted before they were closed down and asked universities to take the students to their main campuses.
The director said that NUC remained the statutory agency of government responsible for approval of courses, approval of new faculties and determination of the funding of universities.
He said discussions with the council were ongoing, adding that the programme would be released once all pending issues were sorted out.
