By Funmilayo Adeyemi
The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has uncovered at least 1,665 fake A’level results during the Direct Entry registration process.
The board’s weekly bulletin made available to newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday, said the Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede gave the figures when he received officials of the National Association of Nigeria Colleges of Education Students, in his office.
He explained that the A’level results verification was occasioned by the endemic corruption associated with the system and the need to restore the integrity of the admission process.
According to him, out of the fake results, 397 were from Colleges of Education, 453 university diplomas and the rest for other A’level certificates.
Oloyede said the institutions must take measures to safeguard the integrity of their certificates, adding that JAMB would continue to scrutinise the certificates through measures that would stand the test of time.
The registrar recalled that in the past, when a candidate applied for Direct Entry, the Board would simply ask awarding institutions to do the necessary screening and due diligence.
He however said that JAMB was dumbfounded by the startling revelations from Bayero University, Kano, where out of the 148 Direct Entry applications to the institution, only six of the certificates forwarded for processing were genuine.
The registrar added that it was the discovery of this monumental fraud that prompted the meeting of critical stakeholders, who met to chart ways of combating the menace.
Part of the measures suggested, he said, was the constitution of an A’level result verification task force as well as the creation of a common platform for the verification of A’level results and certificates.
He said the platform was reliable and user-friendly as it only took five minutes to verify any certificate.
Oloyede also disclosed that the board had adopted “No verification, No admission” policy.
The registrar said 15 institutions had not sufficiently complied with the verification requests from the board, adding that more than 20 unverified candidates were affected.
He said that the board would have to pre-verify candidates applying with the certificates of the 15 institutions before they could complete their DE registration process.
According to him, in the ongoing DE registration, candidates could go ahead and register while the school verify them at the backend.
He, however, declared that the 15 institutions, which were yet to fully comply, would have to pre-verify holders of their certificates before they complete registration process. (NAN)
