Security agents will go after Nigerians with fake certificates from foreign countries already using them to secure opportunities in the country, Education Minister Tahir Mamman has said.
Mamman, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday, described such individuals as criminals and not victims. “I have no sympathy for such people. Instead, they are part of the criminal chain that should be arrested,” the minister said sternly.
“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 timeframe 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,” Mamman said when asked what would be done to Nigerians with fake foreign certificates already within the system.
The minister also said the Federal Government would suspend degree certificates from more countries like Uganda, Kenya and the Niger Republic.
“We are not going to stop at just Benin and Togo. We are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda, Kenya, even Niger here where such institutions have been set up.”
It would be recalled that an undercover journalist 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 (NYSC). The Federal Government had suspended 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.
