Against the backdrop of the suspension of accreditation and evaluation of degree certificates from Benin Republic and Togo, the Federal Government of Nigeria has confirmed that the sanction would be extended to more countries like Uganda, Kenya and Niger Republic.
“We are not going to stop at just Benin and Togo,” Education Minister Tahir Mamman said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Thursday. “We are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda, Kenya, even Niger here where such institutions have been set up.”
Africa Today News, New York had in an earlier report narrated how an undercover journalist acquired a degree from a university in Benin Republic under two months and in fact, deployed for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
The Federal Government had suspended immediately suspended accreditation of certificates from the two francophone West African nations and launched a probe which the minister said should submit its report in three months.
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Mamman also said students who patronise such institutions are not victims but criminals. “I have no sympathy for such people. Instead, they are part of the criminal chain that should be arrested,” the minister said on Wednesday.
He added that security agents will go after those with fake certificates from foreign countries already using them to secure opportunities in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Benin Republic, has made a case for leniency over the ban on validation of degree certificates from the country and Togo, saying 15,000 Nigerian students are in Benin.
But on Thursday, the NANS president of Benin Republic Ugochukwu Favour said the government should consider legitimately admitted students.
“For now, I will say that the Federal Government should look into the issue. Now, you can’t because it is happening in this school, punish everyone because it involved close to 15,000 students in the Benin Republic,” he said on a TV program monitored by Africa Today News, New York.
According to him, the government should step up efforts to probe the matter and punish those involved in the saga.
But he said NANS in the Benin Republic has constituted a committee to probe the matter, expressing confidence that the report of its findings will be vital in curbing future occurrences.