PUNCH
The media space has been agog with news of a purported list of fake professors currently in some federal, state and private universities nationwide.
The development followed the recent investigative report by a reporter with the Daily Nigerian Newspaper which exposed the activities of degree mills in Benin Republic and Togo.
The reporter, Umar Audu, revealed how he obtained a degree within six weeks and proceeded to participate in the one-year mandatory youth service under the National Youth Service Corps scheme.
Audu, who reached out to the syndicate that specialises in selling degree certificates in December 2022, was issued a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communication certificate from the Ecole Superieure de Gestion et de Technologies, Cotonou, Benin Republic in February 2023.
The buzz which followed the investigative report led to the suspension of accreditation and evaluation of degree certificates from the neighbouring West African countries.
However, it didn’t end there. An old news item from 2019 which quoted a former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, as saying that the regulatory agency uncovered about 100 fake professors in some Nigerian universities, surfaced again in the media space.
Though Rasheed explained the rationale behind tagging the “Professors” as fake, no list was attached to indicate a breakdown of the institutions with fake professors.
