JAMB uncovers fraudulent admission practices, issues warning

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has uncovered some fraudulent practices through which tertiary institutions in Nigeria admit students into their programmes as it warns against the continuous perpetration of such acts.

Addressing a news conference in Abuja on Sunday, JAMB’s spokesman, Fabian Benjamin disclosed that the board has witnessed an alarming avalanche of obviously false affidavits and an upsurge of doctored age adjustments on national identification slips being submitted to the examination body to upgrade recorded age.

“The attention of the Board has 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,” Benjamin said.

“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; and any admission purportedly given prior to 2017 will no longer be recognised or condoned unless disclosed within this one-month window.

“Institutions are advised to comply with this directive as there will not be any further condonement of hitherto unrecorded candidates who did not even register with JAMB not to talk of sitting for any entrance examination.”

While reiterating that the current minimum age for admissions remains 16, Benjamin warned that JAMB will no longer entertain absorption of illegal admissions through the “condonement of illegal admissions without a registration number.”