Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede has criticised
the House of Representatives for falsely accusing the Board of imposing
multiple fees on candidates preparing to take the Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination, UTME.
Oloyede, who has been nominated by Vanguard Newspapers for
an award of excellence, expressed his displeasure while responding to questions
on the level of preparations for the mock UTME slated for Saturday, April 9th
nationwide.
According to him, he was a bit disappointed in the lawmakers
for initiating a probe over an allegation that was baseless and lacking facts,
noting that it was a calculated attempt to embarrass the Board and possibly
derail it from its core mandate.
Recall that the House of Representatives had, in its plenary
session recently, taken a resolution to probe JAMB over the alleged imposition
of multiple fees on candidates, following a motion raised by Honourable Sergius
Ogun (PDP-Edo).
The House had listed charges on printing of JAMB result
slip, N1000, the printing of admission letter N1000, change of
institution/course N2500 and retrieving of registration number N1000 as areas
it intends to probe the Board.
In his motion, Ogun had stated that section 88(1) and (2) of
the Constitution empowers the National Assembly to conduct investigations into
the activities of any authority executing or administering laws.
He had also submitted that JAMB was established to control
the conduct of matriculation examinations for candidates seeking admission into
Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education in Nigeria, but alleged
that in recent times, in addition to the registration fees for the examination,
all sorts of processing and administrative fees were imposed on JAMB
examination candidates.
But while writing the allegations off, Oloyede said he
expected the lawmakers to be more factual in their allegations, rather than
peddling falsehoods which could pass for a calculated attempt to derail the
examination agency from its mandate.
He said, “as regards the resolution of the House, I will not
want to talk about it, we feel that the purpose was to discourage us, but we
won’t be discouraged, I believe I should not talk about it until we are
invited, its an allegation but we expected that an allegation to come from the
House should be something solid and based on facts.
“So I am a bit disappointed that somebody could use absolute
falsehood just to embarrass us, if it is the intention as we expect to
discourage us from doing what we are doing, we will not be deterred, we expect
Nigerians to know when their representatives are doing what is right and what
is not right, I can’t say more than that for now.”
Meanwhile, the UTME mock examination is expected to take
place this Saturday nationwide.
But owing to the prevailing increase in diesel price,
Oloyede said the Board has allowed the CBT centres to slightly increase their
service charge to order to enable them to offer reliable services.
According to the Registrar, the initial amount permitted to
be charged was N700 but due to the energy crisis, no centre should charge
candidates above N1000.
“Yes we have allowed the accredited CBT centres, we have
even said anybody who can decrease can do so, but we have hitherto asked the
centres not to charge more than N700 naira, now we have seen the reality, and
we said they could charge up to N1000.
“So the reality is the truth, unless you don’t want them to
conduct the examination, we have done the analysis of their expenses and if we
insist they must put on their Airconditioners, it means the cost of generator
or diesel has to be taken into consideration. We are not increasing our
charges,” he noted.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com