• Cross River commissioner denies padding WASSCE registration list
Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has uncovered no fewer than 1,665 fake Advance Level (A’Level) results during the Direct Entry registration process.
The board’s weekly bulletin, made available to newsmen in Abuja yesterday, stated that the Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, gave the figures when he received officials of the National Association of Nigeria Colleges of Education Students, in his office.
He explained that the A’level results verification was occasioned by the endemic corruption associated with the system and the need to restore the integrity of the admission process.
According to him, out of the fake results, 397 were from Colleges of Education, 453 were university diplomas and the rest were for other A’level certificates.
Oloyede said the institutions must take measures to safeguard the integrity of their certificates, adding that JAMB would continue to scrutinise the certificates through measures that would stand the test of time.
The registrar recalled that in the past, when a candidate applied for Direct Entry, the board would simply ask awarding institutions to do the necessary screening and due diligence.
He, however, said that JAMB was dumbfounded by the startling revelations from Bayero University, Kano, where out of the 148 Direct Entry applications to the institution, only six of the certificates forwarded for processing were genuine.
The registrar added that it was the discovery of this monumental fraud that prompted the meeting of critical stakeholders, who met to chart ways of combating the menace.
Part of the measures suggested, he said, was the constitution of an A’level result verification task force and the creation of a common platform for the verification of A’level results and certificates.
Meanwhile, the Cross River State Commissioner for Education, Stephen Odey, has debunked rumours that his ministry padded the list of students the state government would be paying for their 2024 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) registration.
Odey made the denial, yesterday, while addressing newsmen in his office in Calabar.
He said it was unfortunate that mischiefs were going around peddling false rumours just to be in the governor’s good book.
According to him, from the 298 secondary schools in the state, 16,301 names were sent to the ministry, but after shortlisting, 64 non-indigenes were found on the lists and were removed immediately.
He said some schools that submitted late were not registered, giving a total of 16,237 indigent students, who were registered under the state government to sit for the coming West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) examination.
“Let me use this opportunity to debunk in totality that no list was padded. The WAEC list was never padded and it can never happen under my watch. For those of you who know my antecedents, it can never be because I was sent to this place with trust and I know that the governor trusts me and I will never betray that trust and, of course, no director under my can attempt it.”
