Many prominent Nigerians did not sit for JAMB exams themselves, Registrar reveals

Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has revealed a shocking find.

He said the board had discovered that some prominent Nigerians occupying high positions in the society did not sit its examination by themselves.

He made the disclosure on Friday at the 23rd annual seminar of the Nigerian Academy of Education under the topic, “Admissions into tertiary educational institutions in Nigeria.”

Oloyede added that the outcome of its probe into examination fraud between 2009 and 2019 will shock many Nigerians.

According to him, the board is holding at least 100 people in police cells across the country over Examination malpractice during the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME)

The board also said it had engaged the service of a former Solicitor-General and Senior Advocate of Nigeria to help in the prosecution of the suspects.

He said, “If I were to be punishing every staff of JAMB that is committing infractions, I will not focus on the assignment. I will be going from one disciplinary committee to the other and my attention will be diverted.

“And that is why I go for the shortest route: once you are caught to have committed one infraction, you will not be assigned with examination duties again. It is a privilege, which I can withdraw.

“If you are that bad that I don’t want to see your face around me, I will transfer you to another place.

“If we have to take disciplinary action against all of them, look at it, today, we have not less than 100 people in police cells across the country who were caught for examination malpractices.

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“I have appointed a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who is a former Solicitor-General to help me oversee all these so that the suspects can be brought to book.

“And my Director of Legal asked me, what offences should we charge these people for; for multiple registration? And I said, why can’t we go to the Examination Malpractice Act?

“So, my problem has started with having to draft the charges, despite the fact that we have evidence against them. That is the beginning of the problem.

“I will now ask to be paying my staff to travel out of Abuja to be testifying in court as they are adjourning month after month the cases, and we will be wasting money and time on transport.

“So even now, what we have seen, I tell people that I am more tolerant of corruption in JAMB than when I was as a vice-chancellor at the University of Ilorin.”

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