All is definitely not well with federal government’s blanket ban on degree certificates issued by universities in Togo and Benin Republic. Events since the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman announced the retroactive de-recognition of degree certificates awarded by universities in the two countries indicate vividly that the government may not have taken into account, all the facts to the matter in arriving at the sweeping and painful decision. ..Read Full Article
The government had following revelation by a national daily on how a reporter secured degree certificate from a Benin university within six weeks and got enrolled for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, set up an inter-ministerial committee to investigate degree certificate racketeering and find solutions to the malfeasance.
It also suspended the evaluation and accreditation of degree certificates from Togo and Benin. But few weeks ago, the minister suddenly directed all higher institutions in the country to regularly submit their admission lists immediately after matriculation ceremonies through JAMB dedicated channels. The directive was said to be one of the recommendations of the inter-ministerial committee on fake degree racketeering in the two countries and locally.
Nothing was said of other recommendations of the committee or government’s position on them. But the minister was to throw further insights into the decisions of the government days after, when he was reported to have said, “In the case of Togo we have three universities that are officially approved and licensed to offer degrees, and in Benin there are about five of them. Anyone who didn’t attend these universities is parading fake certificate”.
This must have jolted many especially thousands of graduates of private universities duly approved by the governments of those countries. The weight of the pronouncement was further reinforced by available data from the NYSC which revealed that 21,684 students from Benin Republic and 1,105 from Togo had obtained fake certificates between 2019 and 2023. The government then promised to weed out fake degree holders from the system including those who had secured jobs with them.
It is not certain the measures the NYSC adopted to generate this humongous and scandalous data. Neither is it of public knowledge whether this whopping number of fake degree holders scaled through the NYSC evaluation process in error or were flushed out from the scheme. It would have been interesting for our policy makers to know how the NYSC came about its findings. Such information would be useful in tackling the menace of fake degrees from those two countries.
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Whatever the case, it is a sad commentary that this high figure of fake degree certificate holders sought illegal enrolment into the NYSC scheme within the timeframe. Who knows the number that succeeded undetected just like the reporter that got his degree certificate from Benin within six weeks? But it is puzzling that the NYSC kept this recurring scandal under wraps until the investigations by the inter-ministerial committee.
Had this trend been exposed, perhaps, our education managers would have taken the necessary steps to avoid the present situation they are compelled by the enormity of the challenge to resort to precipitate measures. It is still good a thing we are coming to terms with the danger of fake degree certificates’ influx not only from those countries but from within our own local universities.
But the blanket and retroactive ban is not only too drastic and harsh but guilty of hasty generalisation. The measure conveys the unmistakable impression of the government punishing all graduates of those two countries for offences committed by the unscrupulous ones. There is everything untidy about such a measure.
It is inconceivable that every graduate from those universities parades a fake certificate as Mamman would want us to believe. Rather, what seems to have emerged is a palpable inability by the education ministry to do a thorough job on the very sensitive matter. There is no evidence from the way the government went about the ban that they were meticulous and painstaking to sift the wheat from the chaff considering the very nature, weight and sensitivity of the issue.
Or how else do we rationalise the de-accreditation of all the universities in those two countries except the three and five mentioned in Togo and Benin respectively? How is that fraudulent activity substantially different from the revelations emerging from some of our local universities? The inability of the government to apply the same hash and sweeping measure to local universities in similar mess speak of the contradiction and unfairness of the blanket ban.
The committee should have been more painstaking in investigating the particular universities complicit in the issuance of such fake certificates, the number of those that benefited from that fraudulent activity with recommendations on how to stem the tide. There is no evidence of that. Neither was clean bill of health issued to any of the private universities duly accredited by their home governments.
It is bad enough that fake degrees are being churned out to Nigerians from those countries. But it is also a big statement that patrons of those universities are Nigerian youths. That is a big statement that should have instructed extreme care in separating the genuine certificate holders from the fakes. If the government has other issues with the quality of education and duration of certain courses, these can be taken up with their home governments for remedial measures to address observed shortcomings.
Facts available from the two countries further interrogate the criteria adopted by the federal government in issuing the ban. Stakeholders in education in the Republic of Benin have faulted the claims by the minister.
Contrary to the Mamman’s claims, the stakeholders said there are eight public universities in Benin Republic and 95 private ones. These universities are duly accredited and licensed by the country’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. How the minister arrived at his figure even when the list of accredited and licensed public and private universities were said to have been handed over to the inter-ministerial committee when they visited, is at the centre of the controversy that trailed the ban.
Graduates of the blacklisted universities in Togo and Benin have also protested the sweeping ban. In a press conference under the aegis of West African Francophone Universities Alumni held in conjunction with the National Association of Nigerian Students in Diaspora, they called for a reversal of the order. The groups lamented that the order is not only retroactive and unjust but has exposed their members to ridicule before employers and the larger public.
They further contended that it was wrong for a government that had over the years accredited and approved courses run by some of these universities to turn around only to declare their degree certificates fake. Many of them have secured jobs both in public and private establishments and have not been found wanting. They are at a loss on what to make of the ban now.
This is the contradiction the Nigerian government must resolve. The government said all those that obtained degrees from these countries between 2017 and 2023 should consider them fake. How? It should have offered reasons for the decision. By extrapolation, degrees obtained from those universities before this deadline are considered genuine. So at what point did we get it wrong?
If some of these universities were awarding recognised degrees from 2016 downwards, at what point did our education authorities come derelict of their supervisory functions? Why did it take this long before that realisation? These dialectical questions expose the flaws in the blanket ban. We expect better and considerate measures in issues that are at the very heart of the lives of our younger generation.
The federal government has definitely not finished with this matter. It has to re-engage the governments of the two countries, scrutinise the programmes run by their accredited universities against universal academic standards to arrive at better informed decision.
Through this method, it will fish out the fakes, allowing those that are deficient in some aspects of their programmes, enough time to make up. It flies in the face of reason that all the private universities in the two countries churn out substandard and fake degree……Read Full Article
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