The federal government’s decision to prohibit recipients of honorary doctorates from prefixing “Dr.” to their names is one of the most unexpectedly sensible things to come from officialdom in a long while. It is a small decision with large symbolic consequences, which strikes at the heart of one of Nigeria’s most ridiculous epidemics: the vulgar worship of titles by vain, title-crazy, empty-headed “big men” and “big women” who use purchased honorary academic garlands to conceal the poverty of their intellect.

For years, I have called attention to this national embarrassment. In my October 13, 2012, column titled “Finally, Some Good News from Our Universities,” I praised the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities for its Keffi Declaration on honorary doctorates.

The declaration had four main resolutions: serving government officials should no longer be awarded honorary doctoral degrees, universities without PhD programs should not award honorary doctorates, honorary degrees should be limited to three a year, and recipients of honorary doctorates should not prefix “Dr.” to their names.

I wrote then that this gladdened my heart because honorary doctoral degrees had become cheap candies tossed at anybody with access to stolen public funds, political influence or obscene wealth. I also wrote that the hardest part to enforce would be the directive forbidding recipients of honorary doctorates from styling themselves “Dr.”

I ended the column by wishing the vice chancellors and the NUC good luck in enforcing the “don’t-call-yourself-a-doctor” declaration because, even then, I knew that the vanity economy in Nigeria was too entrenched to be defeated by a gentleman’s agreement.

I returned to the subject on June 7, 2025, in a column titled “Fight Against Vanity Academic Titles in Africa” and again in a September 27, 2025, column titled: “Rarara: There is No Such Thing as ‘Honorary PhD.’” In the June 7, 2025 column, I commended Ghana and Malawi for confronting this same disease.

Ghana’s Tertiary Education Commission had issued what it called a “final caution” to politicians, businessmen and businesswomen, men and women of God and other public figures to desist from publicly using honorary doctoral and professorial titles. It described the practice as deceitful and unethical, said it dilutes the integrity of higher education and warned that it would name and shame violators and take legal action against them.

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That was the right tone. Nigeria now needs the same hard-tackle approach.

The new federal directive, announced by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, gives legal and executive muscle to what the Keffi Declaration lacked. Alausa said the recent trend in the award of honorary degrees revealed “a growing abuse and politicisation of this academic privilege.” He said honorary awards had become instruments of political patronage and financial gain, including the conferral of degrees on serving public officials, which he said should not happen.

He was right. In Nigeria, honorary doctorates have become ceremonial laundering machines for mediocrity. A man can pillage a state treasury, donate a fraction of the loot to a financially desperate university and emerge at convocation as “Dr.”

A politician who cannot compose a sentence in English can be decorated with an honorary doctorate in letters. A businessman whose only contribution to society is predatory proximity to power can become “Dr.” before the sun sets. A pastor or an imam can weaponize congregational awe by adding a fraudulent academic halo to ecclesiastical authority.

The tragedy is that the fraud works. In a country where titles can stand in for thought, the prefix “Dr.” confers instant solemnity on vacuity. It intimidates the unlettered, flatters the insecure and deceives the undiscerning. It allows intellectual lightweights to parade themselves as sages. It turns empty suits into “thought leaders.” It enables barely literate political hustlers to sit in front of television cameras and be introduced with the academic reverence they never earned.

Alausa’s directive, which he says has the backing of the Federal Executive Council, is emphatic that recipients of honorary degrees should not prefix “Dr.” to their names in official, academic or professional usage. They may use the proper post-nominal form after their names, such as D.Lit. (Honoris Causa), LL.D. (Honoris Causa), D.Sc. (Honoris Causa) or D.Arts. (Honoris Causa).

That is the established convention in most serious academic cultures. An honorary doctorate is ceremonial recognition. It is not an earned research degree. It is not a medical qualification. It is not a license to impersonate scholarship.

The NUC’s February 2026 guidelines reinforce this point. The commission said honorary doctorates are non-earned degrees awarded honoris causa to acknowledge distinguished merit, outstanding public service, scholarly impact, creative achievement or significant contributions consistent with the mission of the awarding institution.

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It also said recipients may use the approved title after their names, though they may not use “Dr.,” which is reserved for holders of earned doctorates and medical professionals. The NUC also barred recipients from using honorary doctorates to practice as scholars, supervise research or oversee academic units.

That is an important clarification because Nigeria’s title maniacs do not stop at social vanity. They convert symbolic recognition into institutional fraud. Some use honorary doctorates to join university governing councils as if they were scholars. Some supervise intellectual work they cannot understand. Some convert fraudulent professorships and honorary doctorates into political capital. The distinction between honor and qualification disappears.

Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Ahmad, supplied the missing link between 2012 and 2026. The Keffi Declaration, she explained, was originally a guide developed by vice chancellors, but it had no legal backing. The new federal approval gives it authoritative backing and makes implementation possible. That is the difference between wish and policy.

Still, policy without enforcement is mere decorative “grammar,” as we like to say in moments of joviality in Nigeria. But we do know that our country is a graveyard of beautifully phrased directives. If the government is serious, enforcement must begin immediately and publicly.

First, the Federal Ministry of Education and the NUC should issue a gazetted directive to all universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, ministries, departments, agencies, state governments, professional bodies, media houses and corporate institutions. The directive should make clear that honorary doctorate recipients cannot be addressed as “Dr.” in official correspondence, convocation brochures, government documents, event programs, university publications or institutional websites.

Second, the NUC should create a searchable national registry of honorary doctorate recipients. Each entry should include the recipient’s name, awarding institution, year of award, approved post-nominal title and a prominent warning that the award does not entitle the recipient to use “Dr.” This registry should be updated annually, as Alausa has proposed. It should also identify universities that violate the rules.

Third, every university should be required to send the names of proposed honorary degree recipients to the NUC before convocation. No pre-clearance, no award. A university that awards an honorary doctorate to a serving public official, exceeds the permitted number or fails to orient recipients on proper title usage should lose the right to award honorary degrees for a fixed period.

Fourth, the NUC should adopt Ghana’s name-and-shame method. There should be a public list of offenders: “Mr. X, recipient of an honorary LL.D. from Y University, continues to fraudulently use Dr. in official communication.”

Nigerians fear public disgrace more than they fear rules. Ghana understands this cultural psychology. Its Tertiary Education Commission did not merely whisper disapproval. It threatened legal action and public exposure. That is how to deal with vanity addicts. Soft persuasion will not cure people who have converted self-inflation into an identity.

Fifth, the media must be recruited as an enforcement partner. Alausa already hinted at this. Newspapers, television stations and online platforms should adopt a style rule that forbids the use of “Dr.” for honorary degree holders. When a politician sends a press statement as “Dr. So-and-So,” editors should strip the title. Television anchors should refuse to introduce honorary degree holders as doctors. News reports should use their earned titles or plain names.

Sixth, government institutions should reject documents that misrepresent honorary degrees as earned credentials. Nomination forms, procurement documents, board appointments, conference programs and official biographies should require credential accuracy. Anyone who lists an honorary doctorate as an earned doctorate should be treated as having made a false claim.

Seventh, the Corporate Affairs Commission, INEC and professional licensing bodies should update their templates to distinguish earned degrees from honorary awards. If a candidate’s public profile says “Dr.,” the source of the doctorate should be declared. If it is honorary, the prefix should be removed.

This might seem like pettifoggery. It is not. It is intellectual hygiene. Academic titles exist because they signify arduous training, disciplined research and certified expertise. When politicians with more money than mind rent those titles from compromised institutions, they degrade the labor of people who spent years earning them.

Nigeria has tolerated too many counterfeit majesties. We have fake prophets, fake patriots, fake democrats, fake philanthropists and now fake doctors. The federal government has made the right move. The harder task is to make the move bite.

Without Ghana-style public humiliation, legal consequences and institutional refusal to dignify fraudulent prefixes, Nigeria’s vanity doctors will continue to swagger through public life with borrowed feathers. The country should strip them of the feathers. Let them answer their fathers’ names.

There is really no opposition in Nigeria in the true sense of the word. There are only politicians who have been temporarily kicked out of the inner sanctum of power and influence but who share no fundamental difference with the current temporary occupants of the power structure. Nonetheless, if all the people vegetating on the margins of the power structure came together, they could easily displace those within it in 2027.

Although the coalition of so-called opposition politicians angling to get back to power in 2027 has not articulated a coherent blueprint to show that it will be different from President Bola Tinubu (I strongly believe they are indistinguishable from him), it can effectively instrumentalize the crying incompetence, in-your-face corruption, ethnic bigotry, insufferable arrogance, unabating misery and insouciance that have become the hallmarks of Tinubu’s administration to convince a traumatized nation that it can offer an alternative.

It doesn’t matter if they will replicate or even exacerbate Tinubu’s unrelieved disaster when they get to power. Even the prospect of temporary relief from Tinubu’s unending torment is enough to get most people to give them a chance. But they have shown that they lack the discipline, cohesion and foresight required to wrest power from Tinubu.

Even before they have had a chance to come together, they are splintered. This became clear in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling that restored David Mark’s leadership of the ADC. Neither Peter Obi nor Rabiu Kwankwaso said a word about it.

There are credible rumors that Obi and Kwankwaso didn’t react to the Supreme Court judgment because they had already moved on. They are said to be heading to the NDC and no longer care about what happens to the ADC.

In other words, we are back to the 2023 factionalization of the “opposition.” Both Obi and Kwankwaso appear to be allergic to the internal democratic processes of political parties. They want to be canonized as candidates without contest. Since they can’t find that, they are moving away.

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Atiku Abubakar may emerge as the candidate of the ADC, if the ADC survives, that is. He might choose Rotimi Amaechi as his running mate. Should this happen, the opposition will be fatally fractured, as it was in 2023.

Even now, the verbal darts between Atiku’s supporters and Obi’s and Kwankwaso’s supporters are more caustic and more venomous than the exchanges between either camp and Tinubu’s supporters.

In fact, Tinubu is the net beneficiary of their maximalist posturing and internal warfare. Obi and Kwankwaso supporters say they would rather let Tinubu continue for another four years than support Atiku’s aspiration to replace him. Atiku’s supporters, for their part, say they would rather put up with another Tinubu term than support an Obi/Kwankwaso presidency.

Beyond their crude, petulant name-calling, Obi and Atiku supporters advance arguments in support of their positions, both of which benefit Tinubu. Obi’s supporters say since it isn’t the turn of the North to produce a president, Buhari having ruled for eight continuous years before Tinubu took over, if another southerner can’t be presented as the opposition’s candidate, they would rather support Tinubu to complete the South’s turn.

Atiku’s supporters, on the other hand, turn that logic around and say that if Obi is supported to displace Tinubu in 2027, he would “eat into” the North’s turn, which they believe should start in 2031. They don’t believe Obi’s promise to rule for only one term since there is no legally binding or constitutional constraint that would forbid him from reneging on his promise.

There is a precedent for this in Goodluck Jonathan, who was “allowed” to complete Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s term on the understanding that he wouldn’t seek another term in 2011. He not only ran and won in 2011, he ran again in 2015 and almost won.

So, the argument of Atiku’s supporters is that supporting Tinubu to complete his term benefits the North more than supporting Obi because there is certainty, in their reckoning, that power will move to the region without contest after Tinubu’s term. It’s irrelevant if Tinubu’s policies incinerate them before power rotates back to the North.

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It isn’t the logic or admissibility of the arguments of both camps that is the issue here. The point at issue is that in fighting each other, the opposition is fighting for Tinubu. His economic strangulation of the masses of our people takes the back seat. The insecurity that is ravaging the country, which he seems either unable or unwilling to confront and stamp out, is rendered irrelevant.

In other words, Tinubu’s most potent weapon isn’t INEC with its partisan chairman or a compromised judiciary. It is the opposition. Interestingly, the two main groups in the opposition like to accuse each other of “working for Tinubu” to ensure that their candidate doesn’t win. The truth is that they are both assets to Tinubu and are working for him for free. They are both weapons fashioned against each other for the benefit of Tinubu.

And that’s why I consider Tinubu’s excessive, underhanded zealousness in suffocating the ADC and other opposition parties from becoming viable platforms to challenge him a self-sabotaging strategic blunder. He could have a clear win, because of the selfishness and disunity of the opposition, and still be dogged by a crisis of legitimacy because he didn’t allow a fair contest.

On April 23, I wrote a Facebook post about two contradictory impulses of Nigerian politicians. I said Nigerian politicians are some of the most incurably optimistic specimens of humans you can find on earth. That’s why you have opposition politicians who can’t even agree on who their candidate will be in 2027 say with cocksure certitude that they can wrest power from a man who defied all odds to get to power while out of it and has since consolidated power by ensuring that INEC and the judiciary are in his pocket.

But I also pointed out that Nigerian politicians can be some of the most cowardly people while outwardly projecting faux bravery. That is why a politician who has 32 governors, INEC, the judiciary, an unrivalled war chest and a gravely divided opposition is still so fearful of his chances of winning that he doesn’t want the opposition to even have a platform to challenge him.

Tinubu joked on April 14, 2026, that he could send Godswill Akpabio to the opposition to “scatter them.” Days later, on April 20, his chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, publicly urged ADC lawmaker Leke Abejide to remain in the party so that he could “fight them” and “scatter them.” Abejide said yesterday that Gbajabiamila was only joking, just like his boss, Tinubu.

An English proverb says, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” That is, people often reveal serious truths while pretending to joke.

ADC’s fate is currently hanging in the balance, and if the past is any guide, the David Mark leadership of the party might lose in the federal high court. That would be an avoidably self-inflicted political injury for Tinubu. He doesn’t need to use the instruments of the state to “scatter” the ADC, the NDC, the PRP or any other potential platform opposition politicians might need. The opposition is doing a better job “scattering” itself than he can ever do, even with the instruments of the state.

Tinubu may not need to defeat the opposition because the opposition appears determined to defeat itself. An opposition that lacks the self-denial, strategic patience and moral urgency necessary to galvanize popular resentment and win power doesn’t deserve power.

Until Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Kwankwaso and others understand that power is rarely handed to the disunited, the vain and the impatient, they will remain Tinubu’s most reliable unpaid campaigners.

Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism