The Federal Government of Nigeria has hinted at plans to suspend recognition of degree certificates and other academic qualifications from Kenya and Uganda alongside those of other African nations that include Benin and Togo, citing integrity concerns.

The announcement, which comes just days after Nigeria dropped acknowledgements of accreditations from Benin and Togo, was made by the country’s Education minister Tahir Mamman during an interview with local media on Wednesday.

“We are not just going to stop at Togo and Benin, we are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda and Kenya where such (fraudulent) institutions have been set up,” stated Prof Mamman.

“They don’t really have physical sites, they are just very clandestine in their operations. But we need to protect our employers and the integrity of our qualifications.”

The directive comes against the backdrop of an expose by a local daily whose reporter Umar Audu revealed how he obtained a four-year degree programme from a Benin university in under two months and without ever stepping out of Nigeria.

Consequently, Prof Mamman said the government had commenced investigations into agencies responsible for accrediting academic qualifications obtained abroad.

The flagging of Kenyan-issued papers inflicts an additional reputational injury on educational standards in the eye of global employers, coming at a time when the Kenyan government is on an aggressive drive to court international job markets as part of efforts to address ballooning unemployment.

In November 2022, then Kenya National Qualifications Authority director-general told Parliament that about 30 percent of all academic certificates in Kenya were either fake, falsified or tampered with.