The National University Commission (NUC) has granted licence to the London Academy of Business School in partnership with University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom to operate in Nigeria.

Dr. Derek Watson, an associate professor from the Faculty of Business Law, London Academy of Business School (LAB) said this on Wednesday after meeting with the Acting Executive Secretary of NUC, Chris Maiyaki, in Abuja.

Watson said that the meeting was very productive with the university of Sunderland that has over 30 years of experience.

According to him, first academic session is expected to commence in January 2024 at the Public Service Institute of Nigeria, Abuja.

He said that students in Nigeria would have the same academic standards with their counterparts in UK, expressing management’s pledge to respect the environment and guidelines from the NUC.

“We were the first UK university to market. What we have agreed on today is the criticality in following the compliance procedures.

“In addition to that, we would source credible academics to deliver our programmes from LABs who are qualified teachers and also practising consultants.

“The student will get the same experience as those students studying in England,” he said.

Also speaking, the President/Director of Studies, London Academy of Business School, LABS, Dr Larry Jones-Esan, said that the visit was to get the operational licence to establish in Nigeria.

“The meeting with the NUC today is for us to get the recognition that we are allowed to run the Sunderland courses in Nigeria. So, we do not need the NUC accreditation, what we need is recognition.

“That is very important because if we run any course in Nigeria without NUC recognising it, that degree is useless and they cannot do NYSC, so we do not want that to be the case.

“So, for us to do that, we have to get their permission first before we go out their and start recruiting students otherwise we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.

“If they come here and say you are doing something illegal, you will pay fine and before you get out of that it will be too much,” he said.

He expressed hope that the programmes would be done in line with respect to the authority as well as the system and the environment of the country.

“So, we are going to make sure that everything we do follows the guidelines. We have a very beautiful guidelines but if you fail to follow them you might run into trouble.

” If two million people apply for university admissions every year in Nigeria and only 700,000 are getting a place, that is a problem and they want to solve that problem and we think we have come at the right time.

“We thank the delegates from the University of Sunderland working with the London Academy of Business School in making sure that this gives result as quickly as possible,” he said.

Asked whether the NUC granted licence to them, he said, “This is the reason why we are here, we have gotten the license, that is recognition to run this process, that will be done within a week, and we are hopeful this will be done shortly.

“We will start running the university from January 2024.”

Earlier, the team visited the Public Service Institute of Nigeria along Kubwa road Abuja where it will serve as the study centre and they were received by the Institute’s Administrator, Abdul-Ganiyu Obatayinbo.

Obatayinbo describee the institute’s environment as better than what the University of Sunderland has in the UK, adding that the institute was saddled with the responsibility of building the capacity of public/civil servants.

According to him, the institute has 500 seat auditorium, 12 different halls of 30 seater capacity each, hostels with 202 bedrooms, hospital, security quarters, sports complex, entrepreneurship centre among other facilities that would make teaching and learning conducive.

Some of the courses to be offered at the undergraduate level include, computer science, business and management, network system engineering among others.

While business administration, international business management, education leadership among others will be offered at the masters level.