• All certificates and official references must now clearly state “honorary” or “Honoris Causa”
The Federal Government has barred recipients of honorary doctorate degrees from using the title “Dr” in official, academic, or professional settings, in a move to stop the misuse of academic honours.
Minister of Education Tunji Alausa announced the ban on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He said the decision is part of wider reforms to regulate honorary degrees and protect the credibility of academic titles.
“The recent trend shows honorary degrees are being abused and politicised,” Alausa told State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting. He said awards were increasingly being given for political patronage, financial gain, and to serving public officials — which violates the ethics of honorary awards.
Under the new policy, honorary degree holders must not prefix “Dr” to their names. Instead, they should indicate the honorary nature of the award after their name. Alausa gave examples: Chief Louis Clark, D.Lit. (Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa) or Mrs Miriam Adamu, LL.D. Hons.
“Misrepresenting an honorary degree as an earned qualification will be treated as academic fraud and attract legal and reputational consequences,” he warned.
The policy limits honorary degrees to four categories: Doctor of Laws (LL.D), Doctor of Letters (D.Lit), Doctor of Science (D.Sc), and Doctor of Humanities (D.Arts). It also bars universities without active PhD programmes from conferring honorary degrees, targeting institutions accused of lacking research capacity.
All certificates and official references must now clearly state “honorary” or “Honoris Causa.”
Alausa said the practice has been commercialised and politicised for years, despite the 2012 Keffi Declaration by the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities. That declaration lacked legal force, he said, which is why the Federal Executive Council has now backed the reform.
The Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission will issue a circular to enforce the new rules across all universities, the minister said.