As the October 6 deadline for the enforcement of the regulations for the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD) programme approaches, leading educationists, including renowned scholar and former Vice Chancellor of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi, Prof Abubakar Sani Sambo OON, have praised the Federal Government on its giant strides with the NERD digitisation programme.
Sambo, who is the incumbent Commissioner for Education in Kaduna State, in a chat with newsmen, commended the President Bola Tinubu-led administration for the significant steps being taken to eliminate the recurring evil of education rackets, fake certificates, and the festering for-profit honour scams.
Prof. Sambo, who once served as the Director General of the Energy Commission, applauded the incumbent Education Minister, Dr. Tunji Alausa, for his decisiveness in implementing the NERD scheme, especially the thesis digitisation and anti-certificate racketeering components of the programme, as well as the National Publication Indexing System for researchers.
According to the distinguished scholar, “there is no responsible country in the world that will allow the integrity of its educational system to be crippled by doubts and refuse to provide the tools to guide the public and the industry.
“I am glad that the President appreciates the enormity of the problem. There are just too many hardworking Nigerians over the ages who deservedly earned their honours.
“At least, the nation must put systems in place to protect the sanctity of academic honours from being corrupted by a few bad eggs.
“Even liberal societies like the United States of America will ensure there are clear ways to separate proper educational experience from the activities of degree mills.
“Hence, deploying the NERD’s computerised digital submissions and credential verification system as an academic progression watchdog is timely and commendable. Every sector needs sanity checks.”
On the National Publication Indexing Service of NERD, the Commissioner described the action of the Federal Government as a “first-of-its-kind database in Africa”, stating that “there is no country in Africa that has thought this was important.
“Yet, production or generation of knowledge and being a participant in that sacred altar of global academic publishing should be inseparable. The government must continue to strongly give strategic support to these schemes. We have over 100 years of publishing gap between us and the Western world. Government must intentionally incentivise the private sector to be able to help us catch up”.
Sambo further added that “not being a partaker over the past century constitutes a significant development impairment for African nations, because academic publishing not tethered to an African agenda would only promote 21st-century neo-colonialism”.
The Education Commissioner stated that he would be exploring opportunities to promote the National Policy on NERD in Kaduna State to ensure that higher institutions in the state embrace and comply with its regulations, stating that “we will be supporting this. Kaduna State and, in particular, Governor Uba Sani are irrevocably committed to the objective of improved education sector as an enabler of growth.”
Similarly, other education stakeholders have applauded the NERD programme.
Haruna Abdullahi, an energy expert and Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, stated that “NERD is a game changer” and that the new indexing service creates an “alternative for academics that can match the best globally and be acceptable for promotion and other career-related objectives”.
Abdullahi opined that “for young Nigerians preparing for NYSC, the message is equally clear: your project report or dissertation is an asset kept in trust for you and for the future of the nation.
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“It’s also saying your project work or thesis is important. Long after your graduation, it can be accessed online, referenced for improvements, or simply to determine the kind of student you were!”
Prof. Adenike Adeniji, the first female Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), who spoke at the NERD stakeholders meeting in Abuja, stated that she hoped that the NERD programme “kicks start immediately”, stating that “this is something that we all have been expecting. It should have happened a long time ago, but now that we are in it, there should be no delay again. I think at this time, we are getting it right.”
Former Vice Chancellor of the Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba Akoko, Prof. Igbekele Ajibefun, who is the incumbent Commissioner for Education in Ondo State, described the NERD Programme as ranking “among the most important reforms in the education sector since 1999.”
Ajibefun, who had earlier commended the Minister of Education, Dr Alausa, for the NERD Programme, added that “NERD sends a clear message to education stakeholders, administrators, lecturers, students, institutions, and corporate businesses alike: Nigeria values education integrity – it values its intellectual capital, and that the President is ready to champion the process.”
The Executive Director of Cybersecurity and Programme Communication for the NERD programme, Haula Galadima, recently confirmed that the various schemes on the NERD programme were ready and awaiting flag off.
She implored members of the public and, in particular, the academic community to acquaint themselves with the services on the NERD information portal at https://ned.gov.ng and enrol their focal persons at https://ned.gov.ng/onboarding in compliance with the directives of the Federal Government.
The NERD programme is a special federation intervention programme that was approved by the Tinubu-led Federal Executive Council in February 2025.
In the Declaration of Effectiveness that was released by Alausa in March 2025 to herald the programme, NERD is described as “a one-stop-shop for the national management, administration, and preservation of education data, records, documents and audio-visual assets of the nation.”
Apart from directly addressing the issue of certificate racketeering and abuse of honour or awards, the Federal Government has also mandated students to submit copies of their project reports, theses, and dissertations in the national education database of NERD.
The directive applies to undergraduate and postgraduate students (PgD, Master’s, and PhD) anywhere in Nigeria, regardless of the institution’s ownership.
Changes have been approved to NYSC’s mobilisation regulations to ensure that only prospective participants who have complied with the NERD regulation on the deposit of academic output are mobilised or exempted.
The new NYSC requirement goes into effect on October 6 2025.
The NERD Declaration of Effectiveness provides that “the NERD system is owned by all post-secondary schools in Nigeria and their corresponding regulatory authorities and library services through the Federal Ministry of Education” while Section 6.1.24 of the policy makes compliance obligatory wherein the President invoked his powers as enshrined in Sections 2(4)(4) and 16(1)(C) of the NYSC Act, Cap. N84, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, to henceforth include compliance with the NERD Policy by a prospective Corps member as a prerequisite to NYSC mobilisation or exemption.
Likewise, the policy also mandates the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) to fund or refund only students who have complied with the NERD policy.
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 programme approaches, leading educationists, including renowned scholar and former Vice Chancellor of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi, Prof Abubakar Sani Sambo OON, have praised the Federal Government on its giant strides with the NERD digitisation programme.){kind=link}