JAMB Discovers 1m Illegal Admissions

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) yesterday said it had discovered 1 million illegal institutional admissions.

The board said it was surprised that less than five per cent of affected students’ details had been uploaded on the board’s portal by the institutions, as required.

It blamed the inability of some candidates to obtain their admission letters, which would qualify them to proceed on a one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) or obtain exemption letters on the illegal admissions.

In a statement by its Head of Media and Protocol, Fabian Benjamin, JAMB said the phenomenon was especially true of products of undisclosed illegal institutional admissions conducted outside the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) between 2017 and 2020.

The statement said: “The series of complaints emanated from the frustrations of this set of students who are expressing anger at the lack of formal recognition of their degrees by relevant authorities.

“Consequently, the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, had, out of compassion, approved a final condonement of these underhand admissions.

“It should be recalled that based on that act of magnanimity, the board had placed relevant advertisements in three national dailies (Blueprint, Guardian and Vanguard) of November 24, 2021. The same notice was featured on the board’s website coupled with an easy-to-use advisory issued to all institutions of higher learning to guide them on how these candidates could be redeemed.

“It is even more egregious to note that even among the few that had been uploaded by the schools on the board’s portal, many of the schools had not correctly keyed in their details.

“The board, therefore, uses this medium to appeal to institutions to immediately upload appropriately the matriculation numbers, names, disciplines, year of graduation and other necessary details of the candidates for the board to process the candidates’ condonement applications.

“The board reiterates that it is incumbent on the institutions to correctly key in the details of the candidates as illustrated on the advisory issued to institutions, advertised in the dailies and on the board’s website for the prompt processing of candidates retroactive admission letters for them to obtain necessary clearance for their hitherto underhand admissions.”