The National Universities Commission has introduced strict measures to check the growing abuse of honorary doctorate degrees in Nigeria, following a ban on their conferment on serving public officers. Executive Secretary of the NUC, Professor Abdullahi Yusufu Ribadu, disclosed this in Abuja on Friday while receiving the report of a committee investigating the award and misuse of honorary degrees in the country.
Ribadu said the Commission had to act following disturbing findings from a nationwide inquiry, which showed that honorary degrees intended to honour outstanding service and accomplishments were being widely exploited.
“These degrees are meant to recognize exceptional achievements, but unfortunately, they have increasingly been misused,” he said.
He explained that the situation has been compounded by the proliferation of unaccredited and illegal bodies-both local and foreign-operating to sell honorary doctorate titles. The probe also found large-scale breaches of the Keffi Declaration of 2012, an agreement signed by Nigerian Vice-Chancellors for the regulation of the award of honorary degrees. The declaration explicitly warns against awarding such titles to serving public officers and warns recipients against using “Dr” without proper clarification.
“This is not just about ethics; it is about the law,” Ribadu insisted. “Using the title ‘Dr’ based on an honorary award without clear qualification amounts to false representation punishable under Nigerian fraud laws.”
He said the misuse of these titles erodes public confidence in genuine academic achievements and damages the reputation of Nigerian universities.
According to the report, there are 32 institutions currently operating as honorary degree mills in the country. These include 10 unaccredited foreign universities, four illegal local universities, 15 professional bodies without degree-awarding powers, and three other unqualified institutions. Some, he added, even go as far as conferring fake professorships. Ribadu maintained that only duly approved public or private universities are legally empowered to award honorary doctorates, and that recipients are to use clear nomenclature such as Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa) rather than adopting the standard prefix “Dr”, which should be reserved for holders of earned doctoral and medical qualifications.
