THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, said yesterday its assessment has shown that more than 90 per cent of A' Level results presented by candidates to gain admission into universities were fake.
The examination body said its focus on developments around the Interim Joint Matriculation Board, IJMB, and the Joint Universities Preliminary Examination Board, JUPEB, has resulted in the arrest of over 47 proprietors and lecturers of schools running the programmes in the last one year.
To curb the development, the board said through its Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, that the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, has approved the establishment of what he described as Advanced Level (A Level) Certificates Data Bank in the country.
Oloyede spoke through his representative and JAMB's Director, Legal Services, Dr Abdul Wahab Oyedokun, at the opening session of a three-day workshop for Public Relations' staff of JAMB.
At the workshop, organised by JAMB, in collaboration with Premium Times Academy, with the theme, "Media, Publicity and Public Relations in the modern age," Oloyede said the board had taken several measures to ensure total sanity in its examination processes.
While listing some of the measures to include deployment of sophisticated biometrics technology to curb multiple registration in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, Oloyede said the board had taken another major step to put an end to use of fake A-Level certificates to secure admission.
He said: "In the last one year and in the second coming of Professor Oloyede as registrar of JAMB, one of the major assignments we did here was to focus on some of the things that are happening in these JUPEB and IJMB.
"During the last exam, we called a stakeholders meeting and invited managers of these organs and we asked some questions.
"We also collaborated with others security services to spread our net across the country to see what is happening and lo and behold, more than 47 proprietors of these and some of their lecturers and teachers and people conniving with them in perpetrating malpractices were arrested all over the country.
"Arsing from that, the Minister of Education has graciously approved the establishment of A-Level data bank. So for example, in a particular university, 90 percent of those who presented their A level results for admission were found to be fake."
According to Oloyede, the data bank will ensure all A' Level results are registered under one platform to bring about standardisation and integrity of the certificates.
In a presentation, the JAMB Registrar also revealed that between 2017 and 2022, a total of N27.2 billion was remitted to Federal Government's coffers by the board, while N9.7 billion was used for capital projects within the same period.
He gave the breakdown of the remittances as 2017, N7.8 billion; 2018, N5.2 billion; 2019, N3.76 billion; 2020, N4 billion; 2021, N3.5 billion, and 2022, N3 billion.
Earlier in his remarks, JAMB's Head of Media and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, who commended Oloyede for his massive support for the workshop, called on the board's public relations staff to leverage the training to do more in the discharge of their duties amid surge in citizen journalism.
"Today's media has changed the dynamics of influence and put power in the hand of the ordinary people, PROs must now engage in the conversation through various new channels and tools. Hence the need for this workshop which is aimed at building and maintaining the positive image of JAMB in the face of smear campaigns and misrepresentation of the activities of the Board.
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"PR officers are often the first contact for individuals or organisations seeking to reach out in an informed way. They address inquiries from the media and other parties as well as track media coverage and promote industry trends.
"As the music changes, we must change dance steps or else risk dancing out of tune. Nowadays, the exclusivity enjoyed by mainstream media has come to a halt. Journalistic endeavours by non-professionals, also known as 'citizen journalism,' heralded the influx of use-generated contents which seem to compete with contents from the mainstream media -- in terms of speed, ease, accessibility and availability of use," he said.
The workshop, which attracted JAMB's Public Relations staff from across the country as well as several resource persons, will end tomorrow.
