Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), on Wednesday, said that the board would no longer give the usual N100 million to its state offices.
Oloyede made the disclosure at the opening of a two-day meeting with Computer Based Test (CBT) centres, Technical Advisors, Service Providers such as MTN, Airtel, Galaxy Backbone and other stakeholders.
During the meeting that held at Kongo Conference Hotel, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Oloyede disclosed that the board since 2016 released the sum of N100million to state offices for internal updates within the centres.
“We want to tell you that this year; no kobo will be released for anybody for anything, because those who are running private CBC centres are making a profit.
“And if they can make a profit, paying their salaries and doing other things. We are paying salaries of all staff and in addition, we still take care of offices through quarterly allocation.
The registrar noted that the board had started a forensic on what the centres yielded, “henceforth; I will not go into government coffers to give you money. We can close down any centre that is not useful to us,” he said.
Oloyede also added that as a strategy to curbing exam malpractice by candidates and harassment by examiners, JAMB would collaborate hand in hand with the NIMC making NIN compulsory.
“You know, there are infractions during registration and examinations and we have punished infractions we detected. We will not tolerate it no matter how little.
“Unless I’m wrong, more than 40 per cent of our candidates have obtained their NIN while the remaining ones are running helter-skelter to have theirs,” he said.
The registrar sought the assistance of the Computer Professional Registration Council of Nigeria (CPRCN) to pay particular attention to CCTV.
Oloyede said they were aware that some CBT centres were tampering with CCTV camera in collaboration with the JAMB technical officers, adding that they would not have been able to do so if the technical officers had not collaborated with them, as it was in the server room.
“You should also note that no third party is allowed to make any change on the profile of any candidate. We are having a situation where somebody will want to go out with a particular lady but when such a lady declines, they will mischievously change her examination venue.
“They do that using her password which they must have collected from her to change her examination hall from Lagos to Maiduguri.
“In the day of the examination, she will go but her name will not be there. There are also mothers who change the courses of their children.
“We have a case of a lady who wanted to study English but her mother insisted she must study Law. Unknown to her, the mother went and used her password to change her first choice to law,” he said.
He said when the said lady got admission to study law, she protested that she didn’t apply for law, adding that the board traced it and discovered that it was her mother who collected her password from her and changed the course.
In his speech, Prof. Ibrahim Garba, the Vice-Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, lauded the efforts of JAMB management under Oloyede and urged him to sustain the tempo for the good of the nation’s education system.
Garba, who was represented by the Dep. Vice-Chancellor, Administration, Prof. Zubairu Abubakar, said that the board was being revolutionised to meet the 21st-century challenges.
(NAN)