Federal Government Vows to Expose Fake Certificate Holders

The federal government has committed to expelling people who work with false certificates in both public and private organizations.

This was stated by the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, while speaking in Abuja on Friday when he received the report of an Inter-Ministerial Inquiry Committee on the attainment of degree certificates from the chairman of the committee, Prof. Jubrila Amin.

It should be recalled that the Minister, on January 9, 2024, inaugurated an Inter-Ministerial Committee to examine the veracity of the accusations of extortion of degrees in both foreign and local private universities.

The committee was mandated to review the role of any MDA or its officials in facilitating the recognition and obtaining of fake certificates in question.

Prof. Mamman, who expressed sadness over what was discovered during the investigations, said the ministry would work with relevant agencies to clean up the education sector and rid it of any false trends.

“We cannot afford for a few people to tarnish the integrity of our education.

“It is possible that some carry false certificates in public and private organizations that need to be removed. This report is the product of exhaustive research.

“It is sad that someone who should come out of a Nigerian institution with a 2:1 or 2:2 is now flaunting a first-class international certificate.

“The ministry is determined to take measures to clean up the system,” he said.

Presenting the report, Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee, Prof. Amin, denounced the horrible standards of education in the affected schools, saying that many of the schools that awarded degree certificates were an eyesore.

Amin said the current issues required quick intervention and recommended that all agencies in the education sector digitize/automate their systems.

He said automating the entire education system was a way to do it in such a way that you could sit in your office and monitor what is happening in all tertiary institutions.

In his words, “during our investigation we realized that the current accreditation and results evaluation program is inadequate.”

He therefore called for more universities in the country, saying more universities to train doctors would help a lot instead of Nigerians going out in search of certificates and ending up getting fake certificates.

He also urged the National Universities Commission (NUC) to pay more attention to institutions offering part-time or sandwich programmes, “so that we do not have a repeat of the 2017 saga of centers offering unaccredited courses”.