The National Universities Commission is the federal umbrella organization which oversees the administration of higher education in Nigeria.  With 27 federal universities and dozens (soon to be hundreds) of teaching hospitals and colleges under its wing, the NUC has the potential to change the lives of a million Nigerian scholars and academics.

Federal universities in Nigeria are fairly autonomous, receiving the bulk of their funding directly from the federal government with the NUC simply acting as a conduit.  But some portion of the funds are managed by the NUC, giving the NUC the ability to affect change at the universities through "earmarked" funds.

Regional competition for federal monies is a popular blood sport in Nigeria and the universities play hard to get their share.  As such, the NUC must be ever vigilant that they not appear to be favoring one region over another, making allocation decisions just a little harder on everyone.

Through a UNESCO-sponsored linkage project with the International Center for Applied Physics in Trieste, Italy, the NUC has been able to train a handful of technicians and develop an email gateway for member institutions who want to participate.  The NUC has expressed some dissatisfaction with their ICAP linkage, since they have seen only a modicum of progress in the project's three-year span and the technicians who have been trained in Italy and elsewhere haven't made much progress in Nigeria.  (It doesn't help that the NUC and other participating universities consistently lose the technicians who are sent for training to the private sector.)

The NUC runs a project called the Nigerian Universites Network (NUNet) that is designed to encourage universities to invest in digital communication and training.  The most successful part of this project is their email gateway with ICAP.  Even so, only about a dozen universities use the NUNet email system.  The NUNet email system works well on occasion, but has experienced downtimes that stretch into weeks.  A handful of universities who are using the NUNet email system maintain dual systems with other Internet service providers.  Except for one or two institutions who use an ISP for limited email connectivity, the remaining universities operate without email. 

Even the NUC headquarters has little to show for the years of effort: though the building was built with network wiring in every room and a sophisticated backbone and an emergency power supply, only a handful of computers are attached to the network and the only network service is TELNET email access.

NUNet is currently chaired by Dr. Mamman Aminu Ibrahim.  I have met and worked with  Dr. Ibrahim and NUNet staff several times over the past year.  NUNet had been languishing until he took over the reins about eight months ago.   Since his term began, Dr. Ibrahim has been seeking to define a wider use of the technology and broaden the NUC's training efforts.  His current pipe dream: a satellite dish in place at NUC headquarters before the millennium.

Rilwan Abdulsalami, NUC Library Services Unit Eze ???, NUNet Head Technician Richard Sanusi, NUNet Technical Officer (Richard, by the way, trained with me as an intern in Jos!)

I'm particularly interested in the role of the NUC in the development of network technologies in Nigeria.  Setting up a computer requires a certain amount of local expertise and elbow grease, but hooking up county-wide communication systems takes lots of cooperation and standards.  I've found the fastest way to build capacity is to train cadres of technicians centrally and farm them out.  This is such a complex endeavor and each institution of higher education is going to have to learn that same lessons in deploying nearly identical systems that it simply makes sense to centralize the effort.  By not "reinventing the wheel" at every university and creating an atmosphere where institutions help each other out, the NUC stands to see their work go a lot faster.

Currently, the NUC is seen by many of its member universities as yet another layer of bureaucracy that's thrust upon them by the federal government.  The NUC -- and NUNet in particular -- have not been known to be able to deliver the goods.  With a new chairman and a new government, it's up to the NUC to prove it can do the job. 

Preparing for Satellite Connectivity

When I first arrived in Nigeria in 1998 the NUC was still in the mode of "waiting for NITEL."  All their Internet plans were hung on the promises of NITEL to deliver high-speed networking to all cities and universities in Nigeria.  Of course, NITEL was years behind their promised delivery dates and the systems, though largely installed, were not functioning.

I worked with NUC staff and the Executive Secretary, Professor Munzali Jibril, to explore the option of stand-alone satellite systems.  

This brainstorming has led to a full-blown proposal to provide on-site, dial-in, or drive-in Internet access to every NUC institution.  (Click here for details.)

During this particular visit I spent time with my NUC cohorts exploring further possibilities and attempting to attach some real figures, personnel, and dates to such a potential project.

Dr. Ibrahim and his staff had been doing their homework, trying to ascertain which institutions should be encouraged to join in the project, inventorying what infrastructure was already put in place, and identifying potential partners.

Their work and thinking is reflected in this NUC Powerpoint slide show.

Plotting satellite connectivity  for NUC institutions with NUC staff