TheCable

The federal government says it will extend the suspension of degrees accreditation and evaluation to more countries.

Tahir Mamman, minister of education, spoke on Wednesday during a Channels TV programme.

“We will not stop at the suspension of certificates from Togo and Benin Republic alone,” he said.

“We are going to extend the dragnet. We know some countries like Uganda, Kenya and even Niger where such institutions have been set up.

“A lot of them don’t actually have physical institutions. They just operate under cover. ”

Mamman said students who patronise such institutions are not victims but criminals.

He added that security agents would go after Nigerians with fake certificates from foreign countries.

“No student or Nigerian has any business going to patronise such place. I have no sympathy for such people. Instead, they are part of a criminal chain that should be arrested,” the minister said.

“If along the line, we can trace that there are people already in the system. For instance, if a particular institution or operator has been operating, say in the last 10 years, we will check if we can get records of Nigerians who attended that institution.

“Once we do that, they are criminals and you know there is no timeframe to criminality.

“We will trace them. As long as we can lay our hands on their institutions and they are right here with us, certainly, the security agencies will go after them because they are criminals.”

The minister said certificate forgery is a global problem and not only a Nigerian one, adding that the ministry is aware of the problem.

He said according to report of a committee in 2022, eight institutions involved in fake degrees were uncovered in Nigeria.

He said some of them include European American University, Lagos; Oxford School for Continued Education, Umuahia; Imperial College of advanced studies, Kano; and Medical University of Nigeria, Kaduna.

“The institutions come with very seductive names and are spread all over the country,” he said.

BACKGROUND

A report published in The Daily Nigerian exposed a certificate racketeering syndicate in neighbouring countries like Benin Republic and Togo, that specialises in selling university degrees to willing buyers in Nigeria.

In the investigation, an undercover reporter bagged a university degree from Cotonou in six weeks at “an affordable rate”.

The certificate and transcript bore the authentic scan code of Ecole Superieure de Gestion et de Technologies, ESGT, Benin Republic.

The federal government had subsequently suspended the evaluation and accreditation of degree certificates from Benin Republic and Togo.