The National Universities Commission (NUC) has linked parents’ demand for a prestigious university diploma to the growth of illicit degree-awarding organizations.
This was made public on Sunday in Abuja by acting Executive Secretary Mr. Chris Maiyaki, who stated that satellite campuses and schools that do not grant degrees that are not accredited were still prohibited in the nation.
He advised parents to thoroughly scrutinise institutions before sending their wards to acquire certificates.
“Everybody is right to pursue university education but how you go about it is the crux of the matter.
“The challenge of access, the huge gap between supply and demand makes parents desperate about getting university education for their children and this makes them vulnerable to greedy and fraudulent persons with commercial undertone,” he said.
Maiyaki explained that a committee was however set up to stamp out illegal institutions across the country.
“When we were challenged by this menace of our satellite campuses, NUC in 2000 undertook resource assessment of all outreach centres and we came up with the state of affairs of satellite campuses.
“We wrote to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and FEC was so gracious and there was a total ban on satellite campuses at that time.
“We took a step further at NUC and shut down these centres. So satellite campuses remain banned and outlawed.
“We establish a committee on the closure of illegal universities and we mandated it to identify, locate and prosecute those perpetrating illegalities and we also do this in a multi- stakeholders collaboration involving security agencies,” he said.
He also said a committee was reconstituted in 2021 to identify and prosecute operators of illegal institutions noting that effort recorded a huge success.
