Rashid Tanko’s PhD: Kingsnow University is a degree mill with non-existent personalities as faculty members

For several weeks now, Sofo Tanko Rashid-Computer, the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), has been in the news due to allegations regarding the authenticity of his PhD. 

Since 2016,  Sofo Tanko Rashid-Computer, who’s also the deputy director of elections and IT of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), has referred to himself as “Dr” or has added the suffix “PhD” to his name. It follows an announcement he made on social media on December 11, 2016, that a university has awarded him a doctorate.

“Kingsnow University has conferred on Tanko Rashid the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration and all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining. In witness therefore, this degree, duly signed, has been issued and the Seal of the University affixed. Presented on the first day of September, two thousand and sixteen”, he posted on Facebook.

About eight years later, many Ghanaians, largely on social media, are labelling his degree as fake. They have questioned the credibility of Kingsnow University, the institution the GIFEC Boss claims awarded him the PhD, while calling on him to justify his degree.

Amidst the ongoing controversy about the authenticity of Tanko Rashid-Computer’s PhD, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) wrote to him on June 11, 2025, directing him to stop using the “doctor” title.

Tanko Rashid-Computer, in response, has rejected the allegations and called those challenging the authenticity of his degree “idiots” in a Facebook post.

In a recent interview on Joy Prime TV, he repeated the insults when asked about the allegations. 

“I don’t respond to idiots,” he said.

He added that he enrolled on the PhD programme online with Kingsnow University in 2012 and completed it in 2016. 

Despite Tanko Rashid-Computer’s dismissal of the allegations, more questions linger on the authenticity of his degree. Concerns raised by critics have been based on the claim that Kingsnow University, which is not a physical university, has no online presence or has no website to begin with. 

Fact-Check Ghana’s checks, using open source intelligence (OSINT) tools, reveal that Kingsnow University had an active website, which is currently defunct. 

To analyse the website, the team used Wayback Machine, an internet archiving platform that stores archived webpages. It archives roughly 100 million web pages every day. The platform makes the data it has crawled from web pages available even when the pages are no longer active or have been deleted. 

Fact-Check Ghana analysed the webpage of Kingsnow University (www.kingsnowuniversity.com) against the claims of its authenticity and legitimacy to award doctorates. The team’s verification affirms the fact that the university is a ‘degree mill’ and is not accredited. This report presents the details of the analysis.

 Fake website created in May 2025 for deception. 

At the first search of Kingsnow University, one is likely to land on the web address “www.kingsnowuniversity.com” with a disclaimer stating that the university does not offer a PhD.

However, Fact-Check Ghana can confirm that the disclaimer is misleading and was only put up on the website recently, at the height of the controversy over the authenticity of the GIFEC Boss’s PhD. 

Our checks reveal that the webpage (www.kingsnowuniversity.com) has been defunct since 2019, and the domain name was therefore available for anyone who could pay to secure it. Someone, therefore, bought it and published the disclaimer on May 30, 2025, to deceive the public. Indeed, many social media users have fallen for the deception  ( here, here, here, and here).

Data from WhoIs.com, a platform that provides key ownership details about webpages, indicates that the domain name was registered on May 30, 2025, and will expire on May 30, 2026. 

Fact-Check Ghana also found a WordPress page linked to the university. But that is also not the official website of the Kingsnow University and may have been created recently. 

What we found on the original website of the Kingsnow University

The original website of Kingsnow University Fact-check Ghana retrieved from Wayback Machine (see here) has lots of information about the school, its accreditation, faculty members, programmes of study, scholarship opportunities and more. 

No accreditation or recognition

Kingsnow University claims to offer “accredited and globally recognised degrees to those who cannot pursue their studies from traditional educational institutes due to their work or personal commitments.”

On its website, the university says it is accredited by a group called the International Accreditation Association for Online Schools (IAAOS), an association the university describes as “a self-governing and globally recognised accreditation body.” 

This association, as per information on Kingsnow University’s website, grants accreditation to traditional and non-traditional educational institutions after evaluating them on a stringent set of standards. In the accreditation status, IAAOS also highlights an institution’s strengths and weaknesses, offering recommendations to improve in areas such as curriculum, organisational and classroom management.”

However, Fact-Check Ghana did not find any association or body by the name International Accreditation Association for Online Schools after a deep online search. What the team found was rather an association called the International Accreditation Organisations (IAO). IAO has a database of universities and colleges across many countries. But the team did not find Kingsnow University among the accredited universities.

We also searched for the Global Accreditation Board for Distance Education (GABDE), another organisation, Kingsnow University claims to have its accreditation. The results showed that several online users had raised questions about the association’s credibility as of 2013. There did not seem to be any such recognised body. 

In the United States of America, a reputable organisation that gives accreditation to universities both offline and online is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The council has a directory of educational institutions that are accredited in the US. We did not find Kingsnow University when we searched. 

Fact-Check Ghana checked on the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), via email, for further confirmation on the credibility of Kingsnow University.

On June 13, 2025, the Council replied to our email: 

“This school (Kingsnow University) is not accredited by a recognised accreditor of CHEA or the US Dept. of Education.”

Fake Profiles of Faculty Members

Kingsnow University’s website has details of its programmes and photos of faculty members with their areas of specialisation.

The website also has a brochure that contains a welcome statement and a bold picture of the University’s president welcoming prospective students to the university. When we ran the image of this President through a reverse image search, the results showed that the image was an online stock photo of a model. The photo has been in circulation for about 11 years.

Further checks by Fact-Check Ghana showed that the faculty members did not exist in real life. For instance, a member of the School of Criminal Justice,  Albert M. Anderson, has his profile put up on the page. 

A reverse image search on TinEye showed that the photo claimed to be Albert M. Anderson is a Shutterstock image (see here). The team did not find any Criminal Justice academic named “Albert M. Anderson”.

In another instance, a search for Edward Brooks, who is claimed to be an Adjunct Professor of Criminal Justice at Kingsnow University, teaching Juvenile Justice for the past 20 years and directing the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project, yielded no results. We did not find this particular lecturer online.

Mr Brooks also claimed to have extensive litigation experience spanning both the public and private sectors. Attached to Mr Brooks’ profile on the website is his image.

A reverse image search on TinEye showed that the photo claimed to be Mr Brooks is a Shutterstock image.

This is no different from one Prof Simon Cruz, who is said to be a Faculty Member School of Business and Management. On Kingsnow’s website, he is said to have a Master’s degree in Business and Management with a specialisation in Organisational Behaviour and Leadership. His experience includes working in leadership positions at various top multinational companies, yet a search for this individual profile was futile. When we searched online, we found no such professor. Again, the image of Prof Simon Cruz was a stock image according to the results of an image search by TinEye.

The results were not different for one Dr. Fredrick Myers, another faculty member, said to be at the Faculty of Engineering. His photo is also from Shutterstock image, and we found no profile online fitting the identity provided on Kingsnow’s website. 

Anyone who can pay $17,000 can bag a degree at their convenience

According to Kingsnow University’s webpage, the tuition is “pocket-friendly” and their scholarship is available to every applicant.

“Kingsnow Scholarship covers up to 80% of your entire tuition fee, allowing you to complete your program in as less as $ 16,999.”

The website further indicates that there’s no fixed scheduling for course programmes for students. The students are allowed to study at their own pace and time.

“At Kingsnow since you are boss, so the program will move on your terms. Kingsnow students may start, pause and complete their education programs as per their convenience.”

The university also indicates that once an enrolment fee of $499 is paid and admission details submitted, one is deemed ready to start the programme. “You do not have to wait for any admission evaluation decision to start your studies.”

How long has the university existed?

Since it is not a registered and recognised institution, it is quite challenging to determine when exactly Kingsnow University came to be. Given that the website is the only proof of its existence, Fact-Check Ghana relied on the data from the webpage.

The analysis showed that the website went live in 2016 until July 2019, when it ceased to exist. Thus, the website of Kings University has existed for about three years. 

The facts flowing from above points to the conclusion that Kingsnow University was created as a degree mill, awarding fake degrees. The presence of its website as far back as 2016 points to the fact that it existed, but possibly as a fraudulent entity. The university has folded up, given that it operated solely online, but it is no longer active on the internet.