JAMB may not reduce 2018 UTME fee – jamb boss

 

    Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, the Registrar of Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), says the
board may not review downward the fee for the Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 2018.
Oloyede told newsmen on Thursday in Ilorin that the board
had initially thought of reducing the fee for UTME in 2018.
      The JAMB registrar, who decried the unwholesome
activities of some parents during the 2017 UTME, said
reduction in fee was no longer attractive.
He said many people were arrested during the last UTME
for allegedly collecting money from parents who were
presumed to be poor.
“It (reduction in fee) is one of the options, but what’s
mitigating against it, why I’m not convinced and I don’t
think the board too is convinced, is that are the so-called
poor people genuinely poor?
“Our findings reveal that what people spend on corruption in
the society to solicit for what was not lost is alarming.
“What parents pay for seeking unholy support and what
parents are prepared to pay looking for how to cut corners
show that if actually they are poor, they will not be able to
secure the resources they are wasting,” he said.
On the controversy trailing the huge amount returned to the
Federal Government coffers by JAMB this year, Oloyede
said the board had not been wasteful and whatever comes
in would be appropriately remitted.
     He promised that the board would be strengthened to make
it self-sustaining as obtainable across the world.
“I am not aware of any agency that is in the nature of JAMB
in the world and is being funded by government.
“But in Nigeria, because we are used to something that is
not proper, to get us out of what is improper will even be
strange,” Oloyede said.
Oloyede, who promised that the board would improve on its
activities in the coming years, called on all stakeholders in
the education sector to be honest in the discharge of their
responsibilities.