The Ministry of Education, under the Federal Government’s directive, is determined to uncover individuals presenting counterfeit certificates.
Professor Tahir Mamman, SAN, the Minister of Education, emphasized this commitment while receiving the report of the inter-ministerial committee on degree mills on Friday at his office in Abuja.
Earlier, The PUNCH reported the government’s establishment of a committee to scrutinize the operations of over 100 private universities and certain foreign universities in countries like the Benin Republic and Togo, prompted by an investigative report published in the Daily Nigerian newspaper.
This report sheds light on the operations of various degree mills.
Expressing concern over the revelations from the investigations, Mamman stated that the ministry would collaborate with relevant agencies to cleanse the education sector of any fraudulent practices.
“We can’t afford to have the integrity of our education swayed by a few people.
“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.
He pledged to take a decisive role to ensure standards were enshrined in the system, saying that ‘we can’t afford to let down our country when it comes to standards’.
Presenting the report, the Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee, Amin, decried the horrible standards of education in those schools, saying that many of those schools awarding degree certificates were an eye saw.
Amin said the problems at hand required speedy intervention, recommending that all agencies in the sector digitize or automate their systems.
He said that automating the entire education system was a way to go in such a way that you could sit in your office and monitor what was happening in all tertiary institutions.
According to him, “In the course of our investigation, we realised that the present programme of accreditation and evaluation of results is inadequate.”
He called for more universities in the country, saying that more universities to train PhD holders would help a lot rather than Nigerians going outside in search of certificates while ending up getting fake certificates.
He, therefore, urged the National Universities Commission to pay more attention to institutions offering part-time or sandwich programmes so they don’t have a repeat of the 2017 saga of the centres offering unaccredited courses.
“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 scrutinize 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
