By Farooq A. Kperogi Since news broke of the fraudulent conferment of a fake honorary doctorate (which some people erroneously called an “h...
By Farooq A. Kperogi
Since news broke of the fraudulent conferment of a fake honorary doctorate (which some people erroneously called an “honorary PhD”) on pro-government Hausa vocalist Dauda Kahutu Rarara by the fake Nigerian version of a fake university called “European-American University” (you can’t make this stuff up!), several people have asked me to differentiate between a doctorate and a Ph.D.
I wrote about this in a 2012 column and will be drawing from that column here. There is, in fact, a difference between a doctorate and a Doctor of Philosophy (often abbreviated as Ph.D. or D.Phil.).
To be clear, the term “doctorate” is an umbrella designation for the highest academic laurel that universities confer on people who satisfy the requirements for it. In that sense, a Ph.D. is also a doctorate.
But not every doctorate is a Ph.D. For example, there are professional doctorates like the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), Doctor of Nursing Science (D.N.S.), and Doctor of Pharmacy (D.Pharm) that cater to the medical and allied sciences.
There are also professional and industrial doctorates like the Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Doctor of Public Administration (D.P.A.), and Doctor of Education (Ed.D. or D.Ed.), which have sprouted in American universities and been exported all over the world in recent decades.
In the aftermath of the Rarara fake doctorate saga, someone commented on Facebook that “Ganduje has never earned a Ph.D.; instead, he graduated from Uni Ibadan with a D.P.A. (Doctor of Public Administration).” That was news to me.
I do know, however, that the University of Ibadan does not currently feature a Doctor of Public Administration program on its list of doctoral offerings. What it does offer is a Ph.D. in Public Administration, which is a research-oriented degree for careers in academia and public policy.
Perhaps it offered the D.P.A. as a professional doctorate when Ganduje earned it between 1989 and 1993, although that’s unlikely.
Here’s the key distinction: while a Ph.D. is research-oriented, involves academic rigor, requires evidence of “original contribution to knowledge,” and usually takes longer to complete, professional doctorates are less academically rigorous and are generally oriented toward industry rather than academia. Holders of such professional doctorates usually already work in an establishment and seldom transition into academe afterward.
Of course, this distinction isn’t always neat. Some universities offer both Ph.D.s and Ed.D.s in education, with the Ph.D. as the more prestigious research degree and the Ed.D. as the less rigorous professional doctorate.
Other universities only offer the Ed.D., which in those contexts is just as prestigious and as rigorous as the Ph.D. Similarly, while professional doctorates originated in the U.S., when adopted elsewhere in the English-speaking world (such as in the UK or Australia) they often carry the same rigor as the Ph.D.
Beyond earned doctorates, there are also honorary ones, which are unearned and conferred simply to honor people. These typically include such degrees as Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.), Doctor of Science (D.Sc.), Doctor of Laws (LL.D.), and Doctor of Humane Letters (D.H.L. or L.H.D.), depending on the tradition of the awarding university.
It is crucial to stress, as the title of this column already suggests, that there is no such thing as an “honorary Ph.D.” A Ph.D. is always earned; it is never honorary.
Yet a widespread error in the Nigerian news media and among everyday Nigerians is to refer to honorary doctorates as “honorary Ph.D.s.” That is wrong. They should properly be called “honorary doctorates.” A Ph.D. is a type of doctorate, the most prestigious kind, and it must always be earned through coursework and/or research.
So, Rarara’s fake degree was, strictly speaking, a fake “honorary doctorate,” not a fake “honorary Ph.D.”
This brings up another common question: who is entitled to prefix “Dr.” to their names? Does every holder of a doctorate have the right to be called a doctor? The answer depends on the country. In most Anglophone countries, only medical doctors and people who have earned research and certain professional doctorates can prefix “Dr.” to their names.
Holders of honorary doctorates, on the other hand, generally don’t address themselves as “Dr.” As I pointed out in an October 13, 2012, column titled “Finally, Some Good News from Our Universities,” honorary doctorates are supposed to be borne after the name of the recipient.
“Only people who have earned a Ph.D., a medical degree, an S.J.D. or J.S.D. (i.e., the Doctor of the Science of Law), etc. can legitimately prefix ‘Dr.’ to their names,” I wrote then. “The tradition in many universities worldwide is to insist that recipients of honorary doctoral degrees bear their titles post-nominally, that is, after their names. Example: Muhammad Abdullah, LL.D. h.c. (‘h.c.’ stands for honoris causa), but NOT ‘Dr. Muhammad Abdullah’ and certainly not ‘Dr. Muhammad Abdullah, LL.D. h.c.’”
This isn’t just my view. In October 2012, the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities resolved that the award of an honorary doctorate does not entitle awardees to the right to prefix “Dr.” to their names.
And in the last year, African higher education authorities have been even more explicit. In March 2025, for instance, the Malawian National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) issued binding guidelines banning recipients of honorary doctorates from using the prefix “Dr.”
In May 2025, Uganda’s NCHE followed suit. By June, Ghana’s Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) had directed honorary doctorate holders to drop “Dr.” altogether, threatening naming-and-shaming and even legal action to enforce compliance.
Finally, in August 2025, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education barred honorary doctorate holders from using “Dr.” outside the premises of the institutions that granted the awards.
As you can see, the pushback against the pre-nominal use of “Dr.” by honorary doctorate recipients is intensifying across Africa. Even if Rarara’s honorary doctorate had been genuine, it would still have been against convention to prefix “Dr.” to his name. At best, he could style himself “Alhaji Dauda Kahutu Rarara, LL.D. h.c.” The same applies to all holders of honorary doctorates.
Another doctorate that often causes confusion is the Juris Doctor, also called the Doctor of Jurisprudence, or simply J.D. This is a professional doctorate in law and is the minimum qualification required to practice law in the United States and Canada.
In the Nigerian system, which we adopted from Britain, one spends five years (six, if you add a year of law school) after high school to earn an LL.B. and qualify to practice law. In contrast, Americans and Canadians must first earn a bachelor’s degree, typically in the humanities or social sciences, before enrolling in a three-year J.D. program. In total, it takes at least seven years (four for the bachelor’s and three for the J.D.) to become a lawyer in the U.S. or Canada.
Although the J.D. predates the Ph.D., holders of the J.D. don’t prefix “Dr.” to their names. I even heard of a Nigerian who earned a J.D. from a U.S. law school and insists on being called “Dr.” on the grounds that the J.D. is a doctorate.
He is technically correct, but he is defying tradition. Americans who invented the degree don’t prefix “Dr.” before the names of J.D. holders. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney (all J.D. holders) have never been addressed as “Dr.”
There are at least two reasons for this. First, the J.D. is a strictly professional degree that doesn’t require the submission of a thesis or dissertation at the end of coursework (as other professional doctorates do).
Second, it isn’t the terminal degree in jurisprudential studies. That distinction belongs to the Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D. or S.J.D.), a research doctorate that requires a master’s degree in law (LL.M.) for admission and evidence of “original contribution to knowledge” in a dissertation or thesis.
While J.D. holders can (and do) teach in U.S. law schools with the same privileges as Ph.D.s, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation do not classify the J.D. as equivalent to a Ph.D. Only the S.J.D. is recognized as the equal of the Ph.D.
So, you see, while a Ph.D. is a doctorate (indeed, the most prestigious and recognizable kind) not every doctorate is a Ph.D. Most importantly, a Ph.D. can never be honorary, although there are many undeserved or improperly earned Ph.D.s in Nigeria, but that’s a topic for another column.
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