By FUNMILAYO ADEYEMI

The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman has pledged to flush out persons in public and private organisations working with fake certificates.

Mamman made this known while speaking in Abuja on Friday when he received the report of an Inter-Ministerial Investigative Committee on Degree Certificate Milling from the Chairman of the committee, Prof. Jubrila Amin.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) report that the minister of education on Jan. 9, inaugurated an Inter-Ministerial Committee to examine the veracity of allegations of degrees racketeering within both foreign and local private universities.

The committee was mandated to review the role of any MDAs or its officials in facilitation of the recognition and procurement of fake certificates in question.

Mamman, who expressed sadness over what has been uncovered during the investigations, said that the ministry would work with relevant agencies to sanitise the education sector and rid it of any fake tendencies.

“We can’t afford to have the integrity of our education soar by some few persons.

“It is possible that some are carrying fake certificates in public and private organisations who needs to be flushed out. This report is a product of a thorough investigation.

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

“The ministry is determined to take steps to sanitise the system,” he said.

He pledged to take decisive role to ensure standards were enshrined in the system saying that ‘we can’t afford to let down our country when it comes to standards’.

Presenting the report, Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee, Amin, decried the horrible standards of education in those schools saying that many of those schools awarding degree certificates were an eye saw.

Amin said the problems at hand required speedy intervention, recommending that all agencies in the sector must digitise/automate their system.

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

According to him, in the course of our investigation, we realise that the present programme of accreditation and evaluation of results is inadequate.

He called for more universities in the country, saying that more universities to train PhD holders would help a lot rather than Nigerians going outside in search of certificates while ending up getting fake certificates.

He, therefore, urged the National Universities Commission (NUC) to pay more attention to institutions offering part time or sandwich programmes so we don’t have a repeat of 2017 saga of centres offering unaccredited courses.

“People go and get fake degrees and we have been to those countries and we know what a proper degree looks like, we know what the fake one looks like.

“We have given it to the ministry to scrutinise anyone presenting a certificate from those institutions and anything else is fake.

“It is up to the ministry to find out people with fake certificates and deal with them in whatever way they deem fit,” he said. (NAN)

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