The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has explained the reasons for the seeming delay in the issuance of certificates to students who graduate from the institution.
This was communicated to SaharaReporters by the Public Relations Officer of the institution, Ibrahim Sheme.
According to him, “NOUN always gives certificates to graduates starting from Convocation Day and continuing into the few days following the ceremony.”
He added that “The sheer number of students who graduate every year, which is the largest in the Nigerian university system, makes it impossible to give certificates to all and sundry on a single day or even few days.”
He claimed that certificates are given depending on the emergency of such issuance.
“Sometimes the certificates are given a week or so afterwards; it depends on the exigency of the particular year.”
“Like the one of this year, the certificates will be distributed after the ongoing examinations. So if you say the university fails to issue certificates to students after graduation.”
“I would ask you if there has been a single year that the certificates were not given in the last twenty years.”
Sheme also denied that some students who are transferred from one department to another department have not been graduated.
“That’s not true. All these have been done, most especially the former students of Communication Technology who transferred to Information Technology.
“Those who met the requirements for graduation have graduated.”
When quipped about the instances of the students of the environmental toxicology department transferred to Environmental science cited in the story published by SaharaReporters, he failed to reply.
It would recalled that SaharaReporters noted how “multiple graduates” of the school lamented how they spent monies running into hundreds of thousands in the school but failed to have a certificate to show for their years spent.
The report had further said that all of the students of the environmental management and toxicology department who got admitted in 2017 are yet to be graduated as of 2024 , about seven years after their admission.
Another victim of this development, who finished from the Criminology department noted that despite spending about a million to undertake a degree program in the institution, he is yet to receive a certificate after graduating in July 2023.
