The Nigerian federal government is launching a sweeping crackdown on academic certificate forgery, mandating that all ministries, departments, agencies, and military and paramilitary groups verify their staff’s credentials through a new National Credential Verification Service (NCVS).
Effective October 6, 2025, this initiative directly addresses concerns over diminishing educational standards and fraudulent qualifications. Under the new system, all future appointments will only be confirmed after an instant NCVS clearance, which authenticates academic documents and generates a unique National Credential Number (NCN) and security codes for each employee.
This verification service is a key component of the National Education Repository and Databank (NERD) policy, which will oversee enforcement and require annual compliance reports from all institutions. With approximately 720,000 federal civil servants in Nigeria, the policy aims to establish a centralized and impartial quality assurance system, effectively combating counterfeit degrees, fake certificates, and qualifications from unaccredited institutions across the nation.
