The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it will shock many Nigerians as it set to disclose details of probe it conducted on UTME candidates.
Okay Nigeria learnt that the examination body is probing examination fraud between 2009-2019.
Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, registrar of JAMB, disclosed this on Friday while speaking at the 23rd annual seminar of the Nigerian Academy of Education.
He said that the probe showed that some prominent Nigerians occupying high positions in the society today did not take its examination themselves.
Oloyede further disclosed that the examination body board has hired a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to prosecute over 100 persons nabbed in various malpractices during the UTME which held between April 11 and 18, and who were arrested by security operatives across the country.
In his words:
“If I were to be punishing every staff of JAMB that is committing infractions, I will not focus on the assignment.
“I will be going from one disciplinary committee to the other and my attention will be diverted.
“And that is why I go for the shortest route; once you are caught to have committed one infraction, you will not be assigned with examination duties again.
“It is a privilege, which I can withdraw. If you are that bad that I don’t want to see your face around me, I will transfer you to another place.
“If we have to take disciplinary action against all of them; look at it, today we have 100 people not less than 100 in police cells across the country who were caught for examination malpractices.
“I have appointed a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who is a former Solicitor-General to help me oversee all these so that the suspects can be brought to book.
“And my Director of Legal asked me, what offences should we charge these people for; for multiple registrations? And I said why can’t we go to the Examination Malpractice Act?
“So, my problem has started by having to draft the charges, despite the fact that we have evidences against them. That is the beginning of the problem.
“I will now ask to be paying my staff to travel out of Abuja to be testifying in court as they are adjourning month after month the cases and we will be wasting money and time on transport.
“So even now, what we have seen, I tell people that I am more tolerant of corruption in JAMB than when I was as a vice-chancellor at the University of Ilorin.”
This registrar also revealed that over 76 Computer-Based Test Centres have been de-listed for various reasons and supporting examination malpractice.