Since December 30, 2023, when an online medium published an investigative story of how a Nigerian journalist undercover bagged a Cotonou university degree in six (6) weeks and went ahead to participate in the one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps programme, the issue has refused to go.

The story did not shock many Nigerians, because we have seen the height of certificate forgery and related crimes in the country. What is surprising, however, is the way the Nigerian government and its agencies are falling over themselves to sanction or probe the Cotonou university involved in the fraud. 

If the truth must be told, then we must acknowledge that it is not only in Beninese and Togolese universities that certificates are sold. There are probably more people in Nigeria with bought or forged certificates than anywhere else in the world. 

On November 2020, a national daily reported of statistics that emerged from screening exercises in Niger and Plateau states which were high, “so huge that one is prompted to believe there are probably more forged certificates in circulation in Nigeria than genuine ones.”

A committee that screened civil servants in Niger State had disclosed that 80 per cent of staff of the State Ministry of Education were discovered to be in service for several years with forged certificates. Chairman of the Committee, Ibrahim Panti, said 3,057 civil servants on the state’s payroll were involved in frauds ranging from falsification of credentials to outright forgery of certificates.

Within the same period, Chairman of the Plateau State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, Prof. Mathew Sule, also disclosed that the board sacked 122 primary school teachers discovered to have gained employment in the state with fake certificates.

Prior to all the above, in August 2019, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, NSCDC, paraded eight computer operators caught in Maiduguri, Borno State, for forgery of academic documents. The suspects confessed to be in the business of issuing fake university degree certificates for as low as N2,000.

The NSCDC officials said they had been on the trails of the suspects for alleged doctoring of admission letters, certificates, ID cards, tuition fee receipts, stamps and official seals of various tertiary institutions around the North-East, including the University of Maiduguri.

By December 2019, the media reported again that the National Universities Commission, NUC, discovered over 100 fake professors in Nigeria. The NUC Executive Secretary, Prof Abubakar Rasheed, was quoted as saying that the commission published the details of the fake professors on its website and also sent the names to the various universities for verification.

In the last two months, in November 2023, some staff members of the Lagos State University were also busted for similar certificate racketeering. According to the report, the certificate racketeering syndicate sold authentic Lagos State University certificates for between N2 million and N3 million to interested parties.

To be fair to them, the schools mentioned above are not the only academic institutions in Nigeria whose certain members of staff sell certificates; there are many others. Buying of certificates and related academic frauds have been in Nigeria longer than we can imagine. It is a fact that many Nigerians we see today carrying certificates, especially politicians, either bought or forged the certificates.