The Federal Government has moved to electronic verification of academic certificates as part of a wider push to protect the integrity of Nigeria’s education records and curb certificate fraud. The reform is being driven through the Nigeria Education Repository and Data Bank, known as NERD, a digital platform designed to secure, digitise and authenticate academic records across tertiary institutions.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, said the platform is intended to serve as strategic national infrastructure for academic record management. According to the minister, the system is built to standardise credential handling, support verification processes and improve trust in certificates issued by Nigerian institutions.
Government officials said the platform will support services such as national credential numbers, credential verification, credential revocation, a student clearing house, and a repository for academic theses, abstracts and publications. The broader aim is to reduce manual bottlenecks in certificate checks while creating a more reliable national record system.
Early figures released by the government indicate that the system has already recorded substantial uptake. Within about four months of implementation, nearly 100,000 student submissions had been digitised, more than 133,000 students and about 6,800 lecturers had been enrolled, and hundreds of tertiary institutions had been onboarded for verification-related processes. Different reports put the number of onboarded institutions above 250, while another report put it at over 350, which suggests the rollout is still being updated across sources.
The policy also carries regulatory implications for students and institutions. The Federal Ministry of Education said participation in the NERD system will become a mandatory requirement for participation in, or exemption from, the National Youth Service Corps scheme. That means institutions will face stronger pressure to align their records with the national database.
The move comes amid continued scrutiny of fake certificates and questionable qualifications, especially following public concern over unaccredited foreign degrees and weak credential verification channels. By shifting to a digital verification framework, the government is seeking to make certificate authentication faster, more traceable and harder to manipulate.
For students, employers and public institutions, the significance of the reform lies in easier confirmation of academic history and reduced dependence on slow manual checks. For universities and other tertiary institutions, it signals a tighter compliance environment in which academic data management will become more central to credibility and regulatory standing. This is an inference based on the government’s stated design and compliance goals for the platform.
Accordingly, applicants seeking authentication or evaluation of academic credentials are required to register and upload all relevant supporting documents via the official portal: essverify.education.gov.ng.
Applicants are also required to contact their respective awarding institutions and request that their academic transcripts be forwarded directly from the institutions’ official email addresses to [email protected] for verification and processing
