Speaker
Description
Ii, B. I. A.
NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI
registrar@nsuk.edu.ng
Track: Digital Transformation in Higher Education
Discourse on educational technology in Nigeria has been dominated by e-learning: learning management systems, virtual classrooms, and online course delivery. This narrow framing obscures a broader and arguably more consequential shift now underway in Nigerian universities — the digitalization of the administrative, financial, governance, and infrastructural systems that keep institutions running. This paper examines digital transformation in Nigerian university operations beyond the classroom, covering enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, integrated personnel and payroll platforms, admissions and records management, financial administration, library and research information systems, and cybersecurity and data governance. Drawing on published empirical and policy literature, the paper argues that Nigerian universities are undergoing a fragmented, top-down, and unevenly resourced transformation driven substantially by federal mandates such as the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) and the Treasury Single Account, rather than by institution-led strategic planning. While these interventions have improved transparency and reduced certain forms of payroll fraud, they have also generated friction with the peculiarities of university employment structures, exposed persistent infrastructural and cybersecurity gaps, and left a wide implementation gap between well-resourced and poorly-resourced institutions. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for a more coherent, institution-anchored approach to digital transformation of university operations in Nigeria.