Nigeria, a country that was crowned as the largest economy in Africa has threatened to ban degrees from Kenya and its neighboring country Uganda.
This comes days after the West African nation suspended the accreditation of degrees from Benin and Togo.
“We are not going to stop at just Benin and Togo,” Education Minister Tahir Mamman said on Wednesday, January 3, during an interview on Nigeria’s Channels Television channel.
“We are going to extend the dragnet to countries like Uganda, Kenya, even Niger here where such institutions have been set up,” he added.
Mamman said the measure aims at protecting Nigeria’s employers and the integrity of the country’s qualifications.
The threats to ban degrees from Kenya and Uganda further come after an undercover investigation revealed how a man identified as Umar Adu obtained a degree for a four-year program from a Benin university in under two months.
Although it sounds ironic for Nigeria which lags behind Kenya in the education system to announce plans to ban degrees from Kenya.
In a recent Bscholarly.com report, the World Education Forum ranked Kenya at 95 best in the global education system with a 78.7 percent literacy rate.
The forum which consulted 140 countries with 34 African nations to identify the best education system based on skill development placed Nigeria at 12th position five positions behind Kenya which was ranked 7th position.
Education is compulsory for all Kenyans from six to seventeen years. It has about 17.58 percent of its budget allocated to the sector.
In 2023, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognized Kenya as the first African country to incorporate coding as a subject in primary and secondary schools under the new competency-based curriculum.
