January 4, 2024 NewsOrient
News, Law & Society

• May Also Suspend Recognition Of Degrees From Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Niger Republic, Others

January 4, 2024 NewsOrient

The Federal Government of Nigeria has said it is considering going after all Nigerians already working with fake certificates.

This is part of the responses of top government officials to renewed public outrage over revelations through an undercover investigative report that Nigeria has been riddled with stinking certificate racket and that many of the corrupt beneficiaries have used their fake certificates to gain juicy employments or assume top government and public offices.

Speaking on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme on Wednesday, the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, threatened to go after Nigerians with fake certificates from foreign countries, including those already using such fake Degrees to secure opportunities in Nigeria.

Tahir Mamman said: “We are not going to stop at just Benin and Togo, we are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda, Kenya, even Niger here where such institutions have been set up.”

He said he has no sympathy for the students who patronise such institutions, describing them as “criminals who should be arrested.”

According to the minister: “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.”

It would be recalled that an undercover investigative report by Umar Audu, titled ‘How Daily Nigerian Reporter Bagged Cotonou Varsity Degree In 6 Weeks,’ published by Daily Nigerian Newspaper, has exposed ongoing certificate racket in Benin Republic and other countries through which some dubious elements from Nigeria obtain university degrees within weeks and without attending a class even for a single hour.

Before writing the report, Umar Audu has reached out to the certificate racketeers and through them had bagged a degree in Mass Communication from ESGT, a Benin university in Cotonou, within six weeks. He did that without traveling to Benin or receiving any lecture from the said university. With the fake Degree, Umar Audu, with the aide of the syndicate got registered in and participated in the mandatory one-year national service scheme organised by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) for genuine Tertiary institution’s graduates in Nigeria.

~ NewsOrient