Fifty-eight illegal universities at home, unapproved clerkships abroad: Nigeria's two regulators draw the line for medical students

Nigeria sends tens of thousands of students abroad for medicine — to Ukraine before the war, to Russia, Cyprus, the Caribbean, India, China — and receives them back through the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), which decides whether their degrees count. Two official lists, one from each end of the pipeline, define what "counts".

At home, the National Universities Commission published, on 24 September 2025, a list of 58 institutions operating illegally as universities in Nigeria, with a further eight under investigation for running unapproved degree programmes. Legit.ng's report names examples — a "University of Industry" in Yaba, a "Halifax Gateway University" in Ikeja, an "Atlantic Intercontinental University" in Anambra, a "Columbus University" describing itself as UK-based — and quotes the NUC's warning that "anybody who patronises or obtains any certificate from any of these illegal institutions does so at his or her own risk". Certificates from them are invalid, and law-enforcement agencies were notified.

Abroad, the MDCN has published notices that go to the heart of how foreign medical programmes are marketed to Nigerians. According to the Council's notice on unregulated clinical rotations and Daily Trust's reporting, it is unacceptable for students of foreign medical schools to undergo clinical clerkships in Nigeria or in any country other than the one where their university is located, and the Council will not recognise graduates trained that way; nor will it recognise anyone who studied medicine online. Those two rules strike directly at the products agents sell most: "study the basic sciences abroad, do your clinicals at home", and "the first two years online, then travel". Both produce a degree the MDCN will not register.

The pattern behind both lists is the same: institutions and intermediaries that exist to issue documents rather than to train doctors, relying on students not knowing where the regulator's line is. Daily Trust's coverage of foreign-trained doctors adds the sobering statistic that a large share of returning graduates fail the MDCN's assessment examination — evidence that even real foreign programmes are not equal.

For a Nigerian student the sequence is fixed. Before paying anything abroad: confirm the school on the MDCN's list of recognised foreign institutions and check that the programme is delivered entirely on-site in the university's own country. At home: check any institution offering a "medical" or "health sciences" degree against the NUC's list of approved universities, not against its website. And remember that the MDCN assessment examination stands between every foreign graduate and practice — ask the school for its Nigerian graduates' pass rate, and treat silence as the answer.