The Vice Chancellor of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT, Professor Aloysius-Michaels Okolie, has enjoined the National Universities Commission, NUC, to stop approving  the creation of more State universities in the country.

The Vice Chancellor hinged his reason on poor funding of existing  universities, adding that creating more underfunded universities would further deplete the academic standards in the nation.

He made the call on Wednesday when NUC accreditation teams for Marketing, Building, as well as Surveying and Geo-informatics visited the University for peer review of the aforementioned programmes.

While calling on the teams to partner the University in improving the academic standards of the programmes, he enjoined them to be objective in their assessment.

He equally called on Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities to always deploy funds at their disposal judiciously, adding that part of the rot in Nigerian education system was caused by misappropriation and diversion of funds meant for development by the Vice Chancellors.

In their response, the NUC teams who spoke through Prof. Fredrick Job, assured the University Management that they were not in the University for witch-hunt but to ensure that the University adhered to the minimum benchmark for the programmes.

He thanked the Management of the University for their warm reception, assuring that they would be partners in promotion of research and innovation in the institution.