Following the suspension of accreditation and evaluation of degree certificates from Benin Republic and Togo, the Federal Government has said sanction would be extended to more countries like Uganda, Kenya and Niger Republic.
“We are not going to stop at just Benin and Togo,” the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday.
“We are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda, Kenya, even Niger here where such institutions have been set up,” he said.
An undercover journalist with Daily Nigeria newspaper had detailed how he acquired a degree from a university in Benin Republic under two months and in fact, deployed for the National Youth Service Corps.
The Federal Government had 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.
Mamman said students who patronise such institutions were 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 would go after those with fake certificates from foreign countries already using them to secure opportunities in Nigeria.
On the issue of student loan, the minister said, “The President has given his word that it will be operational from this quarter and the committee is working very hard to ensure that the president’s word is implemented.”