The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has accused some tertiary institutions of engaging in illegal admissions.
The JAMB Registrar, Is-haq Oloyede, levelled the allegation against the institutions on Thursday during an admission policy meeting in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. The institutions he named include the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), University of Abuja (UNIABUJA), National Open University (NOUN), Kwara State University (KWASU), and Ambrose Alli University. Mr Oloyede initially listed Delta State University (DELSU) among the defaulting institutions. But he later withdrew that allegation, saying the inclusion of DELSU on the list was an error.
The policy meeting, convened by JAMB, is a forum for critical stakeholders in the admission processes into tertiary institutions in the country, including university vice-chancellors and registrars, rectors and registrars of polytechnics, provosts, and registrars of colleges of education, and principal officers of monotechnics.
Mr Oloyede disclosed that the Nigerian government had already granted waivers to about one million candidates allegedly illegally admitted by these institutions.
He said the Federal Ministry of Education offered the waivers to those candidates admitted illegally between 2017 and 2020.
However, Mr Oloyede said that despite the waiver, some institutions still engage in illegal admissions.
He said out of the one million it got waivers for, JAMB has been able to register only about 600 candidates so far “because a large number of them do not have the basic qualifications.”
He added that over 700 candidates were offered admission outside the JAMB Central Admission Processing System (CAPS) by the National Open University (NOUN), thereby embarrassing the agency and the university.
“Corrupt admission practices in these institutions include admission crises for regulated programmes (MBBS, Law, Nursing) in University of Nigeria; admission issue by issuance of admission letter before completion of process on CAPS for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 in University of Abuja; Imo State University on admission racketeering under investigation and cases of University Diploma of KWASU,” he said.
Mr Oloyede said any candidate or institution that engaged in illegal admissions after the waiver in 2020 will not get any support.
