Former Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has blamed parents for driving examination malpractice in Nigeria, saying they play a greater role in encouraging the practice than the candidates themselves.
Speaking during an interview on ThisDay Live on Sunday, Oloyede described parents' involvement in examination fraud as the most painful aspect of his decade-long tenure as JAMB registrar.
According to him, many parents deliberately expose their children to dishonest practices in a bid to secure admission into tertiary institutions.
"The most painful period of my experience in JAMB had to do with the level of involvement of parents in organisation of examination malpractice."
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He added, "They are introducing their wards, their children to the world of criminality."
Oloyede maintained that candidates are often not the architects of examination malpractice, insisting that parents bear greater responsibility for the growing trend.
"I have no difficulty. And I think most of the candidates are not problematic. They are not the problem. The problem are the parents."
The former JAMB boss said he was often moved by the extent to which parents went to facilitate cheating during examinations.
"Every time I was confronted with the reality of what parents were doing. It's most of the time I became very emotional about it because I just felt that how on heart will people hate themselves, hate their future to this level."
He argued that parents should strive to give their children a better foundation rather than passing on negative values.
"Because it's like, even if you have deficiency, you wouldn't want to pass the deficiency to the next generation. But that's what many people do with their parents."
