The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has disclosed how it uncovered about 1,665 fake Advanced Level results during students’ registration for the 2023 Direct Entry exercise.
According to JAMB Registrar Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, the exam body was shocked by the 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.
Oloyede added that it was the discovery of the fraud at BUK that prompted the meeting of critical stakeholders to chart ways of dealing with the crime.
Oloyede disclosed this during a courtesy visit by the leadership of the National Association of Nigeria Colleges of Education Students in his office on Tuesday [today] in Abuja.
According to him, “Out of the 1,665 fake results, 397 were from Colleges of Education, 453 were university diplomas, and the rest were other ‘A’ Level certificates.
“It should be of grave concern if no one respects the certificate one is holding; hence, there is a need to safeguard the integrity of ‘A’ Level certificates that are used to secure admission through measures that would stand the test of time.”
The registrar recalled that in the past when a candidate applied for DE, the board would simply ask awarding institutions to do the necessary screening and due diligence.
Part of the measures suggested, he said, was the constitution of an ‘A’ Level result verification task force, and the creation of a common platform for the verification of ‘A’ Level results and certificates.
“The platform is reliable and user-friendly, as it only takes five minutes to verify any given certificate,” the registrar stated; adding, “In order to underscore the importance attached to the exercise, the board has put in place a ‘No verification, No admission’ policy.”
He noted that the modification to the ongoing Direct Entry registration is that candidates could go ahead and register, while the school verifies them on the back end.
