Since January 2024, the Ministry of Education has made it mandatory to verify certificates issued by higher institutions in Nigeria as a prerequisite before such certificates can by authenticated by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Verification of degree certificate and other similar results such as OND, HND, master’s degree and PhD certificates was introduced to help eliminate the possibility of applicants submitting fake certificates to the Ministry of Education and Foreign Affairs for authentication.
To clarify, if you want to legalize or authenticate your degree certificate or diploma at the Ministry of Education and subsequently at the Ministry of Foreign affairs in order to be able to use it abroad, you must begin by having the certificate verified by the higher institution that issued it.
The verification of degree certificate essentially means that the school will write a letter to the Ministry of Education, specifying your name, matriculation number, course of study, and year of graduation. The letter will also confirm that you indeed attended the university and graduated with the course and grade indicated on your degree certificate. A sample of this verification letter from a prominent federal university in Nigeria is attached below:
Sample of Degree Certificate Verification Letter
The steps involved in the verification of degree certificate for purposes of authentication by the Ministry of Education are summarized as follows:
- Contact the university you graduated from (specifically the examinations and records division of the school) and request that they should issue you a verification letter for the purpose of attestation or authentication by the Ministry of Education
- If it is a federal university, you will typically be asked to pay for this verification service via the Remita platform used to receive payments for federal government institutions. This may not apply for state owned universities, affiliated institutions and private universities.
- Consequently, the school will issue the verification letter and give you a copy of it, which you must keep along with the Remita payment receipt (if it is a federal university) and attach to the degree certificate to be later submitted to the Ministry of Education for authentication.
- After the university issues the physical copy of the degree certificate verification letter, you must also request them to email a copy of the letter (with the official domain email address of the school) to the designated email address of the education support services directorate of the Ministry of Education (ess@education.gov.ng).
Having completed these steps, and being sure that the verification letter has been emailed to the Ministry of Education, you can then proceed with the actual authentication procedure. You would need to take along with you the verification letter, the Remita receipt of payment for verification to the university (if applicable), your original degree certificate, as well as your original WAEC or NECO certificate.
After the Ministry of Education confirms and attests the documents, you can then take them to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the final phase of the authentication process.
This verification procedure does not only apply to degree certificates issued by universities alone. Documents such as Ordinary National Diploma (OND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) issued by polytechnics and colleges of education, all well as post graduate diplomas and certificates must also be verified following the same process outlined above before such documents can be presented to the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs for authentication.
