A former Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Suleiman Ramon-Yusuf, has said all those people with Togo and Benin certificates are clear-headed crooks who knew what they paid for.

He said that some of those individuals are incapable of passing the UTME, while others do not possess the required five O-level credits.

He also accused Francophone West African countries of benefitting from issuing dubious degrees to Nigerians.

The Nation on Tuesday reported that the Federal Government suspended accreditation of degree certificates from Benin, Togo varsities.

Ramon-Yusuf, said this when he appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday.

The suspension followed an investigative report by an online newspaper, which unravelled a Cotonou-based University, which issued a degree certificate to an undercover Journalist within six weeks.

The ex-NUC Secretary said: “Many of these francophone countries have benefited so much from the dubious degrees they give to Nigerians and that is why Africa cannot achieve the same level of mobility that people enjoy in Europe under the Erasmus programme.”

According to him, Africa started the mobility and mutual recognition of certificates before the Europeans but has not made progress because of the education corruption in francophone countries.

He maintained that Nigerians with questionable certificates from francophone countries are not victims, adding that they took that option because they find it difficult to get admitted to Nigerian universities.

He stated: “There is no victim, all those people with these certificates are clear-headed crooks who knew what they were paying for because some of them are people who cannot pass the UTME, and some do not have five O-level credits. So they go shopping for these bogus institutions where they get their bogus qualifications from.”

Ramon-Yusuf added that the Nigerian government needs to do more than suspend the certificates from these two countries, as this is not the first time the issue has come up.

He added: “We need to do more than that because this is not the first time this matter is coming to the fore. Now, we need to do something different. Many of these francophone countries don’t have national quality assurance agencies.”

He also called for the inclusion of the NUC in the committee being put together by the Federal Government to look into the matter as that was the statutory agency responsible for the quality assurance of university education in Nigeria. (The Nation)

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