The National Universities Commission (NUC) has announced a nationwide ban on the award of honorary doctorate degrees to serving public officials.
The Commission also declared its readiness to clamp down on illegal institutions issuing fake degrees across the country.
The Executive Secretary of the NUC, Professor Abdullahi Yusufu Ribadu, made this known in Abuja on Friday while receiving the report of a committee set up to investigate the award and misuse of honorary doctorate degrees in Nigeria.
Ribadu said the decision became necessary after disturbing revelations emerged from a nationwide probe into how honorary doctorates are being conferred and used.
He explained that the trend has been worsened by unaccredited institutions—both local and foreign—operating as “honorary degree mills.”
He noted that honorary doctorates are meant to recognise outstanding contributions, but many recipients now misuse the titles, especially by adopting “Dr” without proper clarification.
Ribadu emphasised that the Commission’s findings showed widespread violations of the 2012 Keffi Declaration, an agreement by Nigerian Vice-Chancellors that strictly forbids awarding honorary doctorates to serving public officials and warns recipients not to parade themselves as “Dr” based solely on honorary titles.
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He stressed that misusing an honorary title is not only unethical, but also a violation of Nigerian fraud-related laws.
The report presented to the NUC identified 32 institutions involved in illegal honorary degree activities. These include unaccredited foreign universities, unlicensed local institutions, professional bodies without degree-awarding powers, and other organisations that have no legal mandate to issue degrees.
Some of them reportedly award fake professorships as well.
Ribadu reiterated that only accredited public and private universities are empowered to award honorary doctorates, and even then, recipients must clearly use the correct form, such as “Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa),” instead of assuming the title “Dr,” which is strictly reserved for those who earned doctoral degrees or are medical doctors.
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