The Federal Government, via the Ministry of Education, has pledged to identify and take action against Nigerians who possess fake certificates.

The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, SAN, made this known while receiving the report of the inter-ministerial committee on degree mills on Friday at his office in Abuja.

The PUNCH had earlier reported that the government set up a committee to look into the activities of over 100 private universities and some foreign universities in Benin Republic, Togo and some other countries following an investigative report published in the Daily Nigerian newspaper.

The report exposed the activities of some degree mills.

Mamman, who expressed sadness over what had been uncovered during the investigations, said that the ministry would work with relevant agencies to sanitise the education sector and rid it of any fake tendencies.

“The ministry is determined to take steps to sanitise the system,” he said.

He pledged to take a decisive role to ensure standards were enshrined in the system, saying that ‘we can’t afford to let down our country when it comes to standards’.

Presenting the report, the Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee, Amin, decried the horrible standards of education in those schools, saying that many of those schools awarding degree certificates were an eyesaw.

Amin said the problems at hand required speedy intervention, recommending that all agencies in the sector digitise or automate their systems.

He said that automating the entire education system was a way to go in such a way that you could sit in your office and monitor what was happening in all tertiary institutions.

According to him, “In the course of our investigation, we realised that the present programme of accreditation and evaluation of results is inadequate.”

He called for more universities in the country, saying that more universities to train PhD holders would help a lot rather than Nigerians going outside in search of certificates while ending up getting fake certificates.

He, therefore, urged the National Universities Commission to pay more attention to institutions offering part-time or sandwich programmes so they don’t have a repeat of the 2017 saga of the centres offering unaccredited courses.

“It is up to the ministry to find out people with fake certificates and deal with them in whatever way they deem fit,” he said