Whoever becomes an obstacle will be crushed, Oloyede warns JAMB officials

Prof Ishaq Oloyede, Registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has accused some officials of the board of conniving with candidates involved in examination malpractice.

Addressing newsmen at the Akanu-Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, after touring the South East to monitor the ongoing examination, Oloyede vowed to crush those who stand in the way of the board.

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Oloyede said through the connivance of some officials and security agents, some desperate candidates try to access examination questions under the guise of being robbery victims.

The registrar, who said certain “people still think they are clever,” and can manipulate the situation, insisted that the Board was up to the task of exposing and arresting culprits.

He explained that the major examination malpractice trend in the Northern part of Nigeria is slightly different from what obtains in the South.

“If you go to the northern part of Nigeria, the trend we see is the issue of exam takers, people who want to assist candidates and they try to do this at the point of registration that is the major problem we find in the northern part of the country,” he said.

“In the southern part of Nigeria, what is now evolving is the use of officials – either of JAMB or non-of JAMB and security agents to change the screened students or to penetrate the system, or to plan fake armed robbery and things like that in order to have access to the questions, not knowing that those questions are not things they can get just like that.

“So you have cases where people will plan either with the connivance of our ad-hoc or full staff and say I was robbed, therefore the server has been stolen or my server has been substituted with plan by an unknown person.

“What we are saying is that whoever that becomes an obstacle to the performance of our duty will be crushed.”

Assessment of this year’s JAMB

On his assessment of this year’s JAMB examination, he said: “It’s very fine and splendid. We have a total registered candidate of 1,415,501. At the end of the day, there are just 66,000 or thereabout candidates who will be completing the 2021/2022 JAMBE examination. Out of the 650 centres, we have across the country, over 600 of them performed excellently well; about 20 schools were not serious; 30 of them have been delisted; 24 on the first day and six yesterday (Tuesday)

“These are centres that have not performed up to expectations. It is our wish and desire that the board will continue to ensure that such non-performing centres that have other ulterior motives for joining the board in this exercise should no longer be registered or be allowed to participate.

“But so far, so good. The fact that we also used the name and the instruction of the Federal Government has been very helpful to us because we have been talking of bogus 2.2m candidates.

“It’s clear to us that more than 500,000 of those candidates are fake ; they are duplicate because of examination malpractices here and there. We can say this with authority.”