Nigeria’s education minister, Tahir Mamman, has said that security agencies will go after Nigerians with fake certificates from foreign countries whom he described as criminals.
The minister noted that there is no timeframe for criminality, so the time they committed the crime would not matter.
Mamman disclosed this on Wednesday while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme.
According to him, such people are “part of the criminal chain that should be arrested”.
Regarding people currently in the system who used fake foreign certificates to secure their position, Mamman said, “If, along the line, we can trace that there are people already in the system.
“For instance, if a particular institution or operator has been operating, say in the last 10 years, we will check if we can get records of Nigerians who attended that institution. Once we do that, they are criminals and you know there is no timeframe for criminality. We will trace them.
“As long as we can lay our hands on their institutions and they are right here with us, certainly, the security agencies will go after them because they are criminals.”
This follows an investigative report by Daily Nigerian Newspaper titled “UNDERCOVER: How DAILY NIGERIAN reporter bagged Cotonou varsity degree in 6 weeks,” published last week By Theumar Audu.
There has been public outrage and shock at the level of corruption that has eaten up the educational system in Nigeria and other West African countries after the undercover report that exposed how people are awarded express degrees by mushroom universities in Cotonou.
