Deborah Onyofufeke
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, (JAMB) on Tuesday disclosed that the board Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, through the Educa-Levelation Minister, Malam Adamu Adamu, has Approved an Advanced Level (A-Level) Certificates Data Bank in the country to curb fake results
The board lamented that this development became necessary after it discovered from its assessment that more than 90 percent of A’ Level results presented by candidates to gain admission into universities were fake.
JAMB said its focus on developments around the Interim Joint Matriculation Board, IJMB, and the Joint Universities Preliminary Examination Board, JUPEB, has resulted in to arrest of over 47 proprietors and lecturers of schools running the programs in the last year.
Oloyede spoke through his representative and JAMB’s Director, Legal Services, Dr.at Abdul Wahab Oyedokun, at the opening session of a 3-day workshop for Public Relations staff at JAMB.
At the workshop, which was organized, by JAMB in collaboration with Premium Times Academy, with a theme: ‘Media, Publicity And Public Relations In The Modern Age, “Oloyede said the board has taken several measures to ensure total sanity in its examination processes.
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While listing some of the measures including the deployment of sophisticated biometric technology to curb multiple registrations in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, Oloyede said the board has taken another major step to put an end to the use of fake A-Level certificates to secure admission.
Hear him: “In the last 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.
“And during the last exam, we called a stakeholders meeting and invited managers of these organs and we asked some questions. We also collaborated with other security services to spread our net across the country to see what is happening and lo and behold, more than 47 proprietors of these, some of their lecturers and teachers, and people conniving with them in perpetrating malpractices were arrested all over the country.
“Arsing from that, the Honourable Minister of Education has graciously approved the establishment of an 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 the standardization and integrity of the certificates.
In a presentation, Oloyede also revealed that from 2017 to 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 in the same period.
He gave the breakdown of the remittances as 2017-N7.8 billion, 2018-N5.2 billion, 2019-3.76 billion, 2020 – N4 billion, 2021 – N3.5 billion, and 2022 – N3 billion.
Earlier, 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 a surge in citizen journalism.
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“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.
“PR officers are often the first contact for individuals or organizations 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 endeavors by non-professionals, also known as ‘citizen journalism,’ heralded the influx of user-generated content which seems to compete with content from the mainstream media — in terms of speed, ease, accessibility, and availability of use.
