By Habeeb Ibrahim
The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) has uncovered 3,000 fake graduates with illegal certificates across the country.
According to the Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, these individuals never attended a university but obtained certificates through corrupt means.
Oloyede condemned the act of illegal admissions by some institutions, stating that it is an embarrassment to the nation. He urged the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of State Universities in Nigeria (COPSUN) to clamp down on underhand admissions, which are detrimental to the system and disadvantageous to the country’s image.
The development comes after the House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education ordered JAMB to present a list of tertiary institutions that had conducted irregular and illegal admissions. JAMB had earlier warned candidates to desist from accepting admissions offered by such institutions without full academic participation.
The examination body reiterated that all applications for admissions to first-degree, national diploma, national innovation diploma, and the Nigeria certificate in education into full-time, distance learning, part-time, outreach, sandwich, etc., must be processed only through JAMB. Any admission not captured in its Central Admission Processing System (CAPS) is illegal, null, and void.
In 2021, Oloyede raised an alarm and warned against offering admissions to applicants by higher institutions outside CAPS. He noted that despite constant warnings, Nigerian tertiary institutions offered a total of 706,189 ‘illegal’ admissions across universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and mono-technics between 2017 and 2020.
The top five universities with the highest number of ‘illegal’ admissions offered within the period are the University of Jos, Plateau State, Benue State University, Makurdi, Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, Kwara State University, Malete, and Novena University, Delta State. Among ND certificate awarding institutions, Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin, topped the chart with a total of 45,471 cases within three years.
