Certificate Mills And Doubtful Acquisitions

 By Austin Oboh

 The Federal Government appears to have been recently startled out of a long slumber that had stretched on for years while more and more Nigerians discovered has­sle-free means of acquiring diploma and degree certificates with the cooperation of our West African neighbouurs. 

And in other cases, certificate mills sprouted at street corners, right under the watch of monitoring authorities, to feed the Nige­rian crave for certificates (not learning). Tuesday announcement by the Federal Ministry of Education suspending the ac­creditation or recognition of certificates from some West African countries, espe­cially Togo and Benin Republic, may have come like a knee-jerk reaction but it was a rousing up prompted by an embarrassing expose’ from a journalist who went as far as cracking his way through the NYSC with his arranged documents. The NYSC secretariat, with all its checks erected to stop impostors in their tracks, could not stop him. Again, state authorities were caught napping.

The report that blew the lid off the certificate racketeering was that of a journalist who had embarked on an un­dercover investigation and successfully obtained a degree from a Cotonou Uni­versity in six weeks and participated in the mandatory one-year national service scheme organised by the National Youth Service Corps.

About 25 ‘emergency universities’ or study centres affiliated to universities in the West African sub-region and operating in Nigeria have already been identified by the Federal Ministry of Education this week. Investigations continue while talks are being held between Nigerian authorities and their counterparts in the sub-region to find a way of separating the wheat from the chaff.

What has thus come to light is that more and more Nigerians make trips across the borders to harvest diploma and degree certificates from ‘go-easy’ institutions in neighbouring countries while some of these institutions also ac­credit self-recognised study centres set up by entrepreneurs in Lagos and elsewhere in the country.

Now, the discovery does not eliminate the fact that there is a small set of students who are actually undergoing rigorous academic engagements in some univer­sities in these places already identified. The relevant authorities should be able to assess awarding institutions in these countries and others yet to be identified in order to take a decision on which cer­tificates are acceptable in Nigeria.

The Federal Government’s long run­ning battle with emergency academic programmes reached its peak in the nineteen-nineties when the epidemic of satellite campuses broke out in the coun­try. Almost all Nigerian universities then had study centres or outreaches famously referred to as satellite campuses, especial­ly in Lagos and a few other cities in the country. The centres sprung forth from the need of the working class to learn while working – a great idea, except that most of the centres were run like GCE preparatory schools. There were no formalized establishing authorities, no strict criteria for their establishment, and certainly no serious commitment to standards.

What fuelled the emergence of the ac­ademic hovels were the double compul­sions at both ends: the workers’ strong desire to obtain degree certificates – per­haps, to get promotion at work – and the equally strong, if not stronger, desire by university authorities to make easy mon­ey that may often not be accounted for. Satellite campuses were generously ac­credited and they multiplied in Lagos like Baba Adeboye’s Redeemed Church. Apart from the satellite campuses of distant uni­versities, from Sokoto to Calabar, which materialized in Lagos, offering under­graduate and postgraduate programmes, there were also satellite campuses of uni­versities located in Lagos – universities that were not formally approved to run multiple campuses.

It was a golden age for university lecturers who suddenly had numerous opportunities for side hustles and extra cash. They were sought after and many of them taught in two or three study cen­tres, rushing through classroom sessions daily with little care for thoroughness. Unemployed graduates also benefitted, acting not as graduate assistants but as lecturers. They were remarkably lucky because they – and those dons from cam­puses – did not mind being ‘sorted’. The world of ‘sorting’ was just then attracting widespread boost as the dominant moral aura which once accompanied university tutorship had started to give way under the weight of crippling economic chal­lenges.

Worried by the development, the min­ister of education in 1998, Alhaji Dauda Birma, announced the Federal Govern­ment’s intention to scrap the centres but the brigade of students in these centres who had already invested so much in the programmes were up in arms against the government and there was an undeclared suspension of action.

Then in August 2001, the Federal Gov­ernment finally ordered the closure of the satellite campuses and directed the senate of each institution to devise means of dis­charging the students already pursuing various programmes under the system.

The then Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Peter Okebukola, was the one who disclosed the government’s di­rective on the satellite campuses. He also announced that a task force headed by Prof. Placid Njoku, comprising Commis­sioners of Education in the 36 states, NUC officials and law enforcement agents, had been set up to enforce the order and en­sure compliance.

It was about this time that the sus­pended open university project, earlier conceived as a distance learning institu­tion, returned to focus.

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), initially established on July 22, 1983, by the Second Republic government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari as springboard for open and distance learn­ing in Nigeria, was suspended by the mil­itary government on April 25, 1984. But with the rise in the quest for university education, especially among workers who had embraced the satellite campus idea, the Federal Government had to revive it on April 12, 2001, under the keen supervi­sion of Olusegun Obasanjo who later be­came one of the students. The university, now the largest in the country in terms of student population, immediately filled the gap of an institution offering open and distance learning courses.

At present, 25 universities, apart from NOUN, have been approved to run dis­tance learning centres by the NUC and they offer degree courses in the arts, so­cial sciences/administration, education, and basic medical sciences.

Recognised routes therefore exist for workers and every other qualified applicant to acquire not just the univer­sity certificate but also the learning – if these were the targets of Nigerians who have, with this latest development, been caught in the trap of inglorious academic pursuit. But as the six-week degree pro­gramme expose shows, the suspected universities and their centres here in Ni­geria are nurturing impostors who are basically out to circumvent standard pro­cess. The ‘students’ are not in these uni­versities to get education but certificates. If they have the minimum requirements for university admission and are ready for studies, there is the National Open University and the 25 other universities in the country accredited to operate study centres rather than seek places in centres opened by doubtful agents. This point is being made because there is a ready ex­cuse for promoters of these illegal cen­tres: that the population of applicants for university admission cannot be absorbed by the 170 (comprising 79 private, 43 feder­al, and 48 state) universities in the country.

In any case, the latest discovery is not surprising. Nigeria has been a hotbed of educational programmes from the colonial days when a sizable part of the educated class acquired their certificates from accredited and non-accredited over­seas institutions through correspondence (the harbinger of today’s e-learning). So, one must admit that the academic indus­try has been one of the most sustained engagements in the country since the be­ginning of white-collar jobs. And it has been a positive development regardless of the infestations promoted by ‘corner-cut­ters’ and other violators.

And, by the way, it should be empha­sized that the thirst for education is a profound human element that is to be encouraged but care should be taken to differentiate it from the criminal ambi­tion to obtain certificates without the learning, or with less of the learning (read short-circuited acquisition of cer­tificate).

The emergence of non-standard (or fake) academic programmes owe much to the presence of people who are inter­ested in academic certificates but are chal­lenged by their personal circumstances from earning them. Many people would like to be in possession of diploma or degree certificates but are hindered by their inability to secure the minimum re­quirements for admission into standard tertiary institutions, so seek admission opportunities in places that overlook their inadequacies. There is another set of ap­plicants with the minimum requirements obtained through exam mercenaries or some other such circumvention. 

So, they are convinced ab initio that they don’t have the head for rigorous academic ex­ercises but would like to hold a diploma or degree certificate. For such applicants, emergency academic programmes are an attractive option. There is also a category of applicants who need a degree or diplo­ma to scale through promotion exercises in their places of work – this set has more use for the paper than the knowledge it proclaims. Finally, there is a category of egoists who adore the idea of being ‘edu­cated’ and would like to adorn themselves with academic certificates – for them, go­ing for ‘arrangee’ programmes is perfect­ly okay. The scent is in the paper. These are the categories of ‘students’ who have ensured the continued existence of fake or emergency academic programmes, in connivance with academic merchants on or off campuses.

Unfortunately, the phenomenon of il­legal acquisition, whether of certificate or money, is ever-present and all that rel­evant authorities can do is to maintain consistent policing to checkmate fresh offspring of dangerous schemes such as the one in question. We already have more than enough impostors in the Ni­gerian public space, and they are doing incalculable damage to our collective consciousness.

*Oboh is a commentator on public issues