By Yekeen Nurudeen

The Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB,  Ishaq Oloyede has disclosed that the Board has prosecuted five persons for selling fake Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME forms to unsuspecting candidates.

He said that those prosecuted have been sentenced to different jail terms.

Oloyede who disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja while answering questions on the sideline of 2017 Nigerian Academy of Letters’ lecture, said forms for the UTME which is now scheduled for May 2017 are not yet on sale, adding that the Board has embarked on  massive prosecution of individuals and syndicates engage in the selling of fake forms which resulted in the jail sentences.

His words: “We have arrested so many people in Abuja,  Abeaokuta, Ado-Ekiti, Port Harcourt, Yenagoa, almost everywhere. You know bad people are evenly distributed in Nigeria.

“We are prosecuting and some are in courts and in the last three months we have secured about five convictions, people who are sentenced; some to imprisonment, some to fine but what is important is that they will now know that it is not going to be business as usual.”

The JAMB Registrar however, said the Board has no plan to hike the price of the UTME forms, stressing that he would be the last person to increase the burden of parents.

“That will be inhuman. If I have my way I will reduce the cost. I am a local man and I am a common man. I don’t think I will be part of anything that will increase the burden of the people. In terms of increase, forget it.

“We are studying all the loopholes and we are trying to block them. Let me confess however that I am promising a perfect conduct of examinations or hitch free exams, we will plan very well and we will be transparent and equitable.

“I can understand the level of anxiety and you would agree with me that if we had started the sales of the forms we wouldn’t have known that individuals are involved in selling fake forms, we are trying to sanitise the system, as soon as the sanitisation is completed we will commence the sales of jamb forms.”