The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it uncovered at least 1,665 fake results during the 2023 direct entry registration exercise.
The board also said the A ‘level results verification regime was characterized by corruption associated with the system.
The registrar of the board, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed these when he received the leadership of the National Association of Nigeria Colleges of Education students in his office on Tuesday, April 2nd, in Abuja.
He said, out of this figure, 397 were from colleges of education, 453 were university diplomas, and the rest were other A’level certificates.
Mr Oloyede said individual institutions must take conscious precuationary measures to safeguard the integrity of their certificates and admission processes adding that JAMB would continue to scrutinise the certificates they process in a manner that is consistent with best practices around the world and can stand the test of time.
The registrar said the board can no longer on the system of verification it employed in the past where it basically depended on institutions to verify certificates that candidates present.
He pointed out a particularly disturbing case where, of the 148 results presented to Bayero University, Kano (BUK), for Direct Entry applications, only six of the certificates forwarded for processing were genuine.
The registrar added that it was the discovery of a fraud of that magnitude 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 as well as the creation of a common platform for the verification of A’level results and certificates.
He said the platform was reliable and user-friendly as it only took a few minutes to verify any certificate.
Mr Oloyede also disclosed that the board had adopted “No verification, No admission” policy.
The registrar said 15 institutions had not sufficiently complied with the verification requests from the board, adding that more than 20 unverified candidates were affected.
