The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB, Professor Is-haq 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.
Professor Oloyede expressed his displeasure while responding to questions on the level of preparations for the mock UTME slated for Saturday April 9th nationwide.
He stated that 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.”
The House of Representatives had in its plenary session recently, took a resolution to probe JAMB over alleged imposition of multiple fees on candidates, following a motion raised by Sergius Ogun, PDP-Edo.
The House had listed charges on printing of JAMB result slip, N1000, 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 also submitted that JAMB was established to control the conduct of matriculation examinations for candidates seeking admission into Universities, Polytechnic 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.
Writing the allegations off, Professor Oloyede said ”he expected the lawmakers to be more factual in their allegations, rather than peddling falsehood 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.
The UTME mock examination is expected to take place nationwide on Saturday, 9th April.
VON