Education databank programme excites Kaduna commissioner
As the Oct. 6 deadline for the enforcement of the regulations for the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD) programme approaches, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Education, Prof Abubakar Sambo, has praised the Federal Government on the digitisation programme.
Sambo, who is a former Vice Chancellor of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi, said it was a significant step towards eliminating the recurring evil of education rackets, fake certificates, and for-profit honour scams.
Sambo also commended the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, for the scheme’s implementation, describing the thesis digitisation and anti-certificate racketeering and the National Publication Indexing System for researchers’ components of the programme as a watershed.
“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”.
“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 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 said 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.
‘’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.”
The NERD programme is a special federation intervention programme that was approved by the Federal Executive Council in February, which addressed the issue of certificate racketeering and abuse of honour or awards.
The programme also mandated students to submit copies of their project reports, theses, and dissertations in the national education database of NERD.(NAN)
Edited by Ismail Abdulaziz
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