Over 1,665 fake A’level results have been uncovered during the 2023 Direct Entry (DE) registration exercise, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said.
The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, made the revelation when the leadership of the National Association of Nigeria Colleges of Education Students (NANCES) paid him a visit in his office in Bwari, Abuja.
According to Oloyede, the A’level results verification regime was occasioned by the endemic corruption associated with the admission system and was intended to restore the integrity of the admission process.
He noted that out of the figure, 397 were from Colleges of Education, 453 were University diplomas, and the rest were other A’level certificates.
The registrar asserted that there was the need to safeguard the integrity of A’level certificates that are used to secure admission through measures that would stand the test of time.
In its weekly bulletin released on Tuesday, 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.
He stated that JAMB was dumbfounded by the startling revelations from the Bayero University, Kano (BUK), whereby out of the 148 Direct Entry applications to the institution, only six of the certificates forwarded for processing were genuine.
He added that it was the discovery of the monumental fraud that prompted the meeting of critical stakeholders, who met to chart ways of combating the menace.
He said there was constitution of an A’level result verification task force as well as the creation of a common platform for the verification of A’level results and certificates.
Oloyede affirmed that the board had put in place a “no verification, no admission” policy to underscore the importance attached to the exercise.
While listing 15 institutions that have not sufficiently complied with verification requests from the board, he stated that the affected institutions, with more than 20 unverified candidates, would have to pre-verify candidates applying for admission with their certificates before the candidates could complete their DE registration process.