In a bid to ensure sanity and standardization in the examination process, the Federal government has approved the establishment of Advanced Level (A Level) certificates data bank in the country.
Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, made this known on Tuesday in Abuja at the opening session of a 3-day workshop for Public Relations’ staff of the Board.
The workshop, which was organized in collaboration with Premium Times Academy, has its theme as :’Media, Publicity And Public Relations In The Modern Age.’
Represented by JAMB’s Director, Legal Services, Dr Abdul Wahab Oyedokun, Oloyede said the Board has taken several measures to ensure total sanity in its examination processes.
While listing some of the measures to include deployment of sophisticated biometric technology to curb multiple registration in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), the JAMB Bose said the Board has taken another major step to put an end to the use of fake A Level certificates to secure admission.
“In the last one year and in the second coming of Professor Oloyede as registrar of JAMB, one of the major assignments we did here was to focus on some of the things that are happening in these JUPEB and IJMB.
” And during the last exam, we called a stakeholders meeting and invited managers of these organs and we asked some questions. We also collaborated with others security services to spread our net across the country to see what is happening and low and behold, more than 47 proprietors of these, and some of their lecturers and teachers, and people conniving with them to perpetrating malpractices were arrested all over the country.
“Aside from that, the Honorable Minister of Education has graciously approved the establishment of A Level data bank. So for example, in a particular university, 90 percent of those who presented their A level results for admission were found to be fake,” he said.
According to Oloyede, the date bank will ensure all A Level results are registered under one platform to bring about standardization and integrity of the certificates.
In a presentation, Oloyede also revealed that from 2017 to 2022, a total of N27.2 billion was remitted to Federal Government’s coffers by the Board while N9.7 billion was used for capital projects in the same period.
He gave the breakdown of the remittances as 2017-N7.8 billion, 2018-N5.2 billion, 2019-3.76 billion, 2020 – N4 billion, 2021 – N3.5 billion and 2022 – N3 billion.
Earlier, JAMB’s Head of Media and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, who commended Oloyede for his massive support for the workshop, called on the Board’s Public Relations staff to leverage on the training to do more in the discharge of their duties amid surge in citizen journalism.
In his words : “Today’s media has changed the dynamics of influence and put power in the hand of the ordinary people, PROs must now engage in the conversation through various new channels and tools. Hence the need for this workshop which is aimed at building and maintaining the positive image of JAMB in the face of smear campaigns and misrepresentation of the activities of the Board.
“PR officers are often the first contact for individuals or organizations seeking to reach out in an informed way. They address inquiries from the media and other parties as well as track media coverage and promote industry trends.
” As the music changes we must change dance steps or else risk dancing out of tune. Nowadays, the exclusivity enjoyed by mainstream media has come to a halt. Journalistic endeavors by non-professionals, also known as ‘citizen journalism,’ heralded the influx of use-generated contents which seem to compete with contents from the mainstream media — in terms of speed, ease, accessibility and availability of use”
The workshop, which attracted JAMB’s Public Relations staff from across the country as well as several resource persons, will end on Thursday.
