THE Federal Government has again vowed to expose Nigerians parading fake certificates.
The Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, made this known while speaking in Abuja on Friday, May 3, when he received the report of an Inter-Ministerial Investigative Committee on Degree Certificate Milling from the Chairman of the committee, Jubrila Amin.
It was gathered that the minister of education inaugurated the committee on January 9 to examine the veracity of allegations of degree racketeering in both foreign and local.
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This latest development came a few months after the Ministry of Education had blacklisted 18 universities and also suspended the evaluation and accreditation for university degrees in the Republic of Benin and Togo.
The ICIR reports that the decisions followed a report by an online newspaper, Daily Nigerian, which exposed how a Cotonou-based university issued a degree certificate to an undercover journalist within six weeks.
The online newspaper revealed how beneficiaries of these substandard certificates compete for jobs and other opportunities with hard-working graduates who undergo academic rigours for at least four years to obtain their degrees.
It also reported that the requirements for the fake degree are O-level certificates – fake or genuine – and money, which vary depending on the course, urgency and class of degree.
Speaking on the findings of the committee, the minister said Nigeria can’t afford to have the integrity of its education swayed by a few people, adding that they are committed to flushing them out of the system.
“It is possible that some are carrying fake certificates in public and private organisations and need to be flushed out. This report is the product of a thorough investigation.
“It is sad that someone who should come out of a Nigerian institution with a 2:1 or 2:2 is now parading an international certificate of first class.
“The ministry is determined to take steps to sanitise the system,” he said.
Mamman, who expressed concern over what was uncovered during the investigations, pledged to take a decisive measure to ensure standards were enshrined in the system.
Presenting the report, the chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee, Jubrila Amin, lamented the poor standards of education in those schools, saying that many of the schools awarding degree certificates were an eyesore.
Amin noted that addressing the current issues requires a swift intervention, proposing that all agencies within the sector should digitalize or automate their systems.
He suggested that automating the entire education system was a viable solution, enabling individuals to monitor activities across all tertiary institutions from their offices.
“In the course of our investigation, we realised that the present programme of accreditation and evaluation of results is inadequate,” he said
He further called for more universities in the country, saying that more universities training PhD holders would be much better than Nigerians going outside in search of certificates and ending up getting fake certificates.
He urged the National Universities Commission (NUC) to pay more attention to institutions offering part-time or sandwich programmes.
“People go and get fake degrees and we have been to those countries and we know what a proper degree looks like; we know what the fake one looks like.
“We have given it to the ministry to scrutinise anyone presenting a certificate from those institutions and anything else is fake.
“It is up to the ministry to find out people with fake certificates and deal with them in whatever way they deem fit,” he said.
This was not the first time the minister had vowed to catch fake certificate holders. In January, Mamman said security agents would go after Nigerians with fake certificates from foreign countries who were already using them to secure opportunities in the country.
Mamman had described such individuals as criminals and not victims. “I have no sympathy for such people. Instead, they are part of the criminal chain that should be arrested,” the minister had said.
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: umustapha@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M
The Federal Government’s firm stance against fake degree holders is commendable. Uncovering such deceit not only protects the integrity of Nigeria’s educational system but also ensures that genuine graduates are not unfairly disadvantaged. This decisive action will hopefully deter future fraud and uphold the true value of hard-earned academic achievements.