Nigerian Journal of Technology and Innovation

Blockchain-Based Academic Credential Verification in Nigerian Universities

Ngozi Adeyemi, Babatunde Olawale

Academic credential fraud remains a persistent challenge in Nigeria, with significant consequences for institutional trust and graduate employability. This paper proposes a permissioned blockchain architecture — built on Hyperledger Fabric — to enable tamper-proof issuance and real-time verification of academic certificates. A prototype was deployed in collaboration with three Nigerian universities and evaluated across 2,400 credential verification requests. The system achieved near-instant verification (mean latency: 1.2 s) with zero false positives, compared to a mean turnaround of 11 business days for conventional verification channels. Policy implications for national adoption are discussed.