New courses must meet labour market needs, FG tells universities

The Federal Government has directed federal universities to justify additional recruitment with evidence of labour market demand, graduate employability and national skills needs, as it moves to tighten control of personnel expenditure in the tertiary education sector.
The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, issued the directive on Monday in a letter addressed to vice-chancellors of all federal universities, requiring institutions to demonstrate the need for additional staff before submitting recruitment requests.
Under the new guidelines, universities can seek replacements for staff who retire, resign, die, are dismissed or transfer to other institutions.
However, requests for additional personnel to support new courses, academic programmes or institutional expansion must be backed by evidence that the programmes address existing labour market gaps and contribute to Nigeria’s human capital development priorities.
The institutions must also establish that proposed courses are distinct and do not duplicate programmes already available elsewhere in the university system.
Alausa said the existing recruitment process did not adequately account for the financial implications of additional personnel, which are borne entirely by the Federal Government.
He expressed concern that some universities had sought additional staff for programmes without sufficient evidence of demand in the labour market.
The minister said the revised process was intended to promote prudent spending, improve workforce planning and ensure that recruitment decisions reflected the actual needs of institutions and the country.
He directed vice-chancellors to ensure that all manpower requests complied with the new criteria, warning against recruitment proposals that lacked adequate justification.
The letter was copied to the Minister of Finance, Minister of State for Education, Accountant-General of the Federation, Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education and Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, among other officials.
The directive places greater emphasis on linking university staffing decisions to the relevance of academic programmes, employment opportunities for graduates and the Federal Government’s capacity to fund additional personnel.