The Nigerian government has declared war on diploma mills and fraudulent universities operating in Africa. This came after years of Nigerians being duped into enrolling in sham institutions, paying exorbitant fees, and ending up with worthless credentials.
It comes after the recent suspension of accreditation for degrees obtained from institutions in Benin and Togo for the same reasons.
According to Nigeria’s Education Minister Prof Tahir Mamman, the government will extend its crackdown beyond Togo and Benin to countries like Uganda and Kenya.
“We are not just going to stop at Togo and Benin, we are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda and Kenya where such institutions have been set up,” Mamman said in an interview on Wednesday.
He revealed that many of these operators do not even have physical campuses but conduct their activities clandestinely online. “They don’t really have physical sites, they are just very clandestine in their operations,” the minister noted.
The government hopes to protect both students and employers from being defrauded by these diploma mills. “But we need to protect our employers and the integrity of our qualifications,” Mamman affirmed.
This decisive action by the Nigerian authorities follows years of young Nigerians falling prey to fancy online advertisements of dubious colleges and universities. Many have lost huge sums of money and precious time pursuing worthless credentials, damaging their prospects of securing jobs or further studies.
Nigerian government aims to sanitize the higher education sector across Africa and protect the integrity of academic qualifications.
The move by the Nigerian government comes in the wake of fraudulent qualifications obtained by its nationals from foreign institutions after one Umar Audu, a reporter revealed in an undercover investigation how he obtained a four-year degree programme from a Benin university in under two months and without ever stepping out of Nigeria.
Responding to the report, Prof Mamman said the government had commenced investigations into agencies responsible for accrediting academic qualifications obtained abroad.
“I have no sympathy for those with fake certificates from foreign countries.
They are not victims but part of the criminal chain that should be arrested,” he asserted, emphasizing that this measure aims to safeguard Nigeria’s employers and maintain the integrity of the country’s qualifications.
The flagging of Ugandan-awarded degrees inflicts an additional reputational injury on educational standards in the eye of global employers, coming at a time when the government is grappling to address ballooning unemployment at home with the international job market as an alternative.
However, implementing the clampdown across borders will require significant inter-governmental cooperation.
