Mohammed Shosanya
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has uncovered a number of fraudulent practices through which tertiary institutions in the country are admitting students.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday in Abuja, JAMB’s Public Affairs Advisor, Benjamin Fabian reiterated that the minimum age for admission into tertiary institutions for 2024/2025 session is 16 years as agreed by stakeholders in the recent policy meeting.
“For the 2024 admission cycle, candidates who will be at least sixteen years old at the time of admission will be considered eligible.
“This decision follows the directive from the Chairman of the 2024 tertiary admission policy meeting, who is also the Honourable Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, that the extant policy of 6-3-3-4 be enforced only from 2025 session,” he noted at the briefing session.
He disclosed that there was an alarming avalanche of obviously false affidavits and upsurge of doctored upward age-adjustments on NIN slips being submitted to JAMB to upgrade recorded age.
According to him,this trend is dangerous, inimical and unnecessary, stressing that only those below 16 would not and should not be admitted in accordance with the decision of the 2024 policy meeting.
He also warned that JAMB will no longer entertain absorption of illegal admissions through the window of “Condonement of Illegal Admissions without Registration number”.
He alleged that some institutions use this window to absorb, for the candidates’ sake, illegal admissions that were conducted prior to 2017.
He added:”It would be recalled that CAPS was introduced in 2017 to ensure accuracy, records, transparency. accountability, fairness, and equity in admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The window (for mop-up of pre 2017 unofficial/unregistered admission) has been on now for 7 years and it is now being abused.
“The Board’s position is informed by the discovery of widespread and unwholesome practice whereby some institutions were colluding with candidates to falsify vital details, such as, backdated year of entry and subsequent age-adjustments, to utilise certificates of genuine candidates
with similar names to facilitate illegal admissions to enable participation of fake candidates in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.
“Recent worse discoveries made it imperative for the Board to speak out to save the integrity of the education system.
“In the same vein, the attention of the Board has also been drawn to the predilection of some institutions to admit candidates outside the approved
Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) platform and process such through the condonement of illegal admissions window to accord legitimacy”.
JAMB,however,insists that in order to close this abused window, the Board has decided that all institutions should now (or never) disclose all candidates illegally-admitted prior to 2017 whose records are in their system within the next one month beginning from 1st August, 2024.
Fabian maintained that any admission purportedly given prior to 2017 will no longer be recognised or condoned unless disclosed within this one-month window.
