Crime
How an international organization beguiles Nigerians with fake awards
An international organization that has been beguiling Nigerian academicians with fake awards has been uncovered. The organization,World Championship, was exposed over dispensing fake awards of academic excellence to certain Nigerian scholars struggling for international recognition. The discovery and exposure was made by a vigilant Nigerian, Farooq Kperogi. He noted that the report that Dr. Yakubu Nura won an international award in Physics is not true, saying it is a scam.
Farooq Kperogi acknowledged that the Nigerian cyber space is being lit up with the news that a certain Dr. Yakubu Nura of the University of Maiduguri has won “the World Physics Competition by defeating about 5720 contenders from 97 countries.” He marveled that the report indicated that this “feat” reputedly earned him the distinction of becoming “the father of modern Einstein’s planetary equation studies in Physics.”
Kperogi declared: “Dr. Yakubu Nura did not win any World Physics Competition.”
He narrated that the truth is that Dr. Nura is the willing victim of a scam, a kind of scam he identified as scams of ego, “which prey on the status anxieties and low self-esteem of insecure, fraud-prone people.” He revealed that World Championship, the “organization” that conferred the “award” on Dr. Nura, is a well-known scam operation that does not, for strategically fraudulent reasons, have a site with its own domain name. He pointed out that the organization uses a freesites.google.comaccount to perpetrate its scams.
According to Kperogi, anyone who pays a fee can get any award from the site. He referred individuals to check the site (which link is provided in the comment section below) to see the list of “award winners” the organization features in every imaginable field. It was noted that many Nigerians have been victims there.
He decried that some past Nigerian “winners” even managed to scam the ever credulous Nigerian media into publicizing their “feat.”
He cited an instance when Dr. Kaywood Leizou of the Niger Delta University (NDU) got The Guardianto write a story about his “award” from this same fraudulent site on October 19, 2018, titled “Bayelsa Don wins global chemical sciences contest”. He noted that the report indicated: “The Bayelsa-born don beat 5,845 others from 89 countries whose nominations were screened for this year’s edition. Consequently, the International Agency for Standards and Ratings (IASR) has recognized Leizou as one the world’s 500 most influential experts on earth in chemical sciences for the year.”
Kperogi further revealed that in 2018, the same website “conferred” one Dr. Shuaib Idris Mohammed of Edo State with the “World Champion in Agricultural Extension (Credit Facilities)” award “out of 91 countries.” He noted that the site added: “Dr. Shuaib Idris Mohammed is now recognized as Father of modern Credit Facilities in Agricultural Extension. The purpose of the award is to identify brilliant scientists and academicians around the world through World Championship. The World Championship is organized by International Agency for Standards and Ratings at international level.”
He remarked that the statement sounds familiar, maintaining that that is the exact language used for Dr. Nura, same suspiciously atrocious grammar. Kperogi noted that the organization often beguile people to believe that the “contenders” for the “awards” are always in the thousands, and from more than 90 countries in the world.
Though, there seems to be a seeming attack on the person of Nura after the revelations by Kperogi whichNational Dailywill have a follow up inquiry on the narratives.
Kperogi apparently declared: “But nothing in Nura’s scholarly record, and those of others who have been made “fathers” of whole disciplinary specialties by the fraudulent site, suggests that he is anywhere close to the pinnacle of his career.
“In fact, most of his articles are published in dodgy, predatory journals that publish ANYTHING submitted to them for a fee.
“The saddest thing about this fraud is that news organizations like the NTA, Voice of Nigeria, Sahara Reporters, and even well-known people like Shehu Sani and Kadaria Ahmed fell for it.
“It’s an easily detectable scam. Nigerians have to be the world’s greatest suckers for cheap scams.”