The Minister of Education Tunji Alausa is pursuing tighter digital links between education records and the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) as part of a wider effort to curb certificate fraud, speed credential verification, and reduce cases of qualified graduates being excluded from jobs, and national service.
Alausa, said Tuesday that reforms under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda are intended to “close loopholes” in record management and make it simpler for employers and agencies to authenticate academic qualifications.
The Minister spoke after a meeting with NYSC Director-General Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, who led a corps delegation to the ministry.
“The digital transformation of Nigeria’s education system under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda is strengthening the integrity of academic qualifications, tackling certificate racketeering and ensuring that genuine students and graduates are not disadvantaged,” Alausa said.
At the center of the initiative is the Nigerian Education Repository Data Bank (NERD), which Alausa described as collecting and verifying university certificates, tracking learners across the education system and supporting tertiary institutions through dedicated help-desk officers.
He said a broader Nigerian Education Data Infrastructure would link records across different stages of a student’s journey, and that the ministry has digitized its Education Support Services, including certificate verification and procedures for foreign applicants.
Minister Alausa said talks are underway to build an application programming interface (API) between the ministry’s systems and the NYSC to enable faster verification and seamless data exchange.
The Minister added that reforms would address administrative and data problems — such as name discrepancies and irregularities affecting part-time National Diploma graduates and holders of National Certificate in Education seeking Higher National Diploma admission, that have prevented some qualified Nigerians from participating fully in the labor market and national service.
NewsQuest reports that the meeting signaled other planned measures: introducing a national Learner Identification Number and a consistent framework for recording and sequencing names across education and identity databases to establish accurate identity records from the start of a learner’s education.
Minister Alausa also said the government has strengthened safeguards against examination malpractice and the leakage of exam questions, and that those gains should be extended to tertiary institutions.
The drive to tighten credential authentication follows a series of high-profile discoveries and policy moves.
In September 2025, the federal government directed ministries, departments and agencies to begin using the National Credential Verification Service to authenticate staff certificates; the policy was slated to start in October 2025.
Later, NERD authentication was made part of NYSC mobilisation requirements.
In March 2026, Minister Alausa said prospective corps members would need NERD-issued certificates authenticating their qualifications before registering for national service.
The NYSC announced in June 2026 it would strictly enforce that requirement to prevent unqualified or fraudulent graduates from entering the scheme.
The government’s concern about forged credentials surfaced in several recent probes.
In November 2025, then-JAMB registrar Prof. Is-haq Oloyede said roughly 15,000 candidates had allegedly forged admission letters to try to qualify for NYSC mobilisation.
A federal investigation into the credentials of a former Minister of innovation, Uche Nnaji, resulted in a March 2026 panel finding that a degree certificate from the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, was forged; the probe also raised questions about an NYSC certificate tied to the case.
Brigadier General Nafiu praised the Ministry’s digital reforms and pledged the NYSC’s support.
He said the corps has pursued digitalization since 2014 and introduced systems – including QR-coded documents, that have reduced document cloning and improved the reliability of information used for corps deployment.
Nafiu said the NYSC has complied with the Federal Executive Council’s directive on collaboration with the Nigerian Education Repository Data Bank and is ready to deepen the partnership.
