The National Universities Commission has accredited five additional engineering programmes at UNIZIK following a successful resource verification exercise.
The National Universities Commission (NUC) has officially accredited five additional engineering programmes at Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), following a rigorous resource verification exercise conducted last month.
The approval, contained in a letter addressed to the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Joseph Ikechebelu, grants the university full academic status to admit students into Petroleum, Chemical, Mechatronics, Biomedical, and Environmental Engineering. This expands the faculty’s portfolio to a total of twelve accredited disciplines.
The NUC resource verification team, led by Prof. Adebayo Ogunlela, spent five days assessing the university’s laboratory facilities, workshop equipment, library resources, and academic staffing ratios. In its final report, the team noted “significant improvements” in the faculty’s research output and industrial partnerships.
“The previous concerns regarding laboratory space for Mechatronics and specialised software for Petroleum Engineering have been satisfactorily resolved,” the NUC report stated. “The university has demonstrated the requisite human and material resources to sustain these programmes.”
UNIZIK’s Faculty of Engineering had been operating the five programmes under “interim approval” since 2022. The new status grants the university autonomy to run the courses without external mentoring and allows graduating students to apply for full registration with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN).
Speaking at a press briefing in Awka, Vice-Chancellor Ikechebelu described the development as a “turning point” for technological education in the South-East.
“This was not merely about ticking boxes for the NUC,” he said. “We have built a solar-powered Mechatronics lab from scratch, signed a equipment donation MoU with an indigenous oil firm for our Petroleum Engineering department, and hired six new PhD holders in specialized fields. Our students will now compete globally.”
The accreditation comes at a critical time. Nigeria faces a shortage of locally trained engineers, with many oil and gas firms relying on expatriates. UNIZIK’s new Petroleum Engineering programme aims to close that gap, with a curriculum focused on downstream processing and local content compliance.
Students currently enrolled in the five programmes expressed relief and excitement. Chukwudi Ezeh, a 300-level Biomedical Engineering student, said the news removed uncertainty for his cohort.
“We were taking courses that weren’t yet fully accredited. There was always a fear in the back of your mind: would our degrees count?” Ezeh said. “Now we can focus on our projects knowing the NUC has our back.”
The NUC has encouraged other Nigerian universities with pending engineering programmes to emulate UNIZIK’s resource-driven approach. The commission noted that while enrollment in engineering has surged nationally by 34 percent since 2020, infrastructure investment has not kept pace.
UNIZIK’s Faculty of Engineering will begin admission for the five new programmes in the upcoming Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) cycle. The university has also announced plans to break ground on a dedicated Engineering Workshop Complex by Q1 2026.
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