CITIZENS COMPASS— The Federal Government of Nigeria on Wednesday, said that henceforth, recipients of honorary degrees should nolonger answer to the title, “Dr” as doing so would amount to academic fraud.
This means that prefixing “Dr” to their names is now prohibited.
Tunji Alausa, the minister of education who gave the directive at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, said the prohibition was from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to curb the abuse and politicisation of honorary awards and restoring credibility to academic titles.
According to him: The recent trend we’ve seen with the award of honorary degrees has revealed a growing abuse and politicisation of this academic privilege.
“We’ve seen awards being used for political patronage, for financial gain, as well as the conferral of awards on serving public officials, which should not happen.”
Under the new policy, recipients are prohibited from prefixing “Dr” to their names in any official, academic or professional setting. Instead, they are required to use the full honorary designation after their names.
“Recipients shall not prefix doctor to their names in official, academic or professional usage,” Alausa said, adding that “misrepresentation of honorary degrees as earned academic credentials shall be considered academic fraud and subject to legal and reputational consequences.”
The policy also limits the categories of honorary degrees Nigerian universities can award to four—Doctor of Laws (LL.D), Doctor of Letters (D.Lit), Doctor of Science (D.Sc), and Doctor of Humanities (D.Arts).
Alausa further stated that universities without active PhD programmes would no longer be permitted to confer honorary degrees aims at addressing the proliferation of such awards by newer institutions.
He noted that all honorary degrees must clearly indicate their status as “honorary” or “Honoris Causa”, while the Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission will enforce compliance and monitor convocation ceremonies.
According to the minister, the government will also publish an annual list of legitimate recipients of the title, “Dr”, to safeguard the integrity of academic qualifications.
