Tinubu’s govt launched a committee to tackle fake certificate: Does charity begin at home?

President Bola Tinubu-led administration, through the Ministry of Education, on Tuesday launched a committee to tackle the issue of fake certificates.

This notice was made known to journalists by the ministry’s Director of Press and Public Relations, Ben Goong, in Abuja.

“Education Minister, Prof. Tahir Mamman, will this afternoon, inaugurate an inter-ministerial committee on degree mills,” Ben Goong said 

If one went down memory lane, it would be recalled that this development followed an investigation by Daily Nigerian exposing how a university in the Benin Republic sold a degree certificate to its undercover reporter who never attended the school. 

It is noteworthy that this investigation led to the federal government suspending the accreditation of certificates from two francophone universities.

Also, recall that Tahir Mamman, the Minister of Education, in an interview with Channels TV, labelled such people as criminals who ought to be arrested. 

His exact words remain:

“Students who patronize foreign institutions to procure degrees are not victims. They are criminals. I have no sympathy for such people. Instead, they are part of the criminal chain that should be arrested.”

When asked what would be done to Nigerians with fake foreign certificates already within the system, the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, in his own words, again 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 time frame to 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.

Now, considering this action being put in place by the Ministry to tackle the issue of fake certificates, if one were to go by the threatening words of the Minister to arrest these “criminals” who obtained fake certificates from foreign countries and are now parading the labour market with it, and if one were to also consider the unresolved controversies surrounding President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Chicago State University certificate, one wonders and questions if this action and threats by the Minister hold for the President as much as other offenders whom the Minister has clearly labelled “criminals that ought to be arrested.”

It is a popular saying that Charity begins at home, and in this case, where Nigeria as a whole is concerned, home begins from Aso Rock, where the head of the country resides. 

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Joy Chukwu

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