The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has commended the moves by the Federal Government to investigate the fake universities and certificates being awarded to Nigerians.
Prof. Oloyede, who gave the commendation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Friday, said though the state of education in the country was not good enough, it had been improving and would keep getting better.
Recall that the education system came into focus recently following an investigative report that unveiled how some Nigerians deploy unscrupulous means to obtain fake academic degrees from neighbouring countries.
In an investigative report titled ‘How Daily Nigerian reporter bagged Cotonou varsity degree in 6 weeks’, an undercover journalist, Umar Audu, revealed how a degree certificate from a Cotonou-based university in Benin Republic, Ecole Superieure de Gestion et de Technologies (ESGT), was delivered to him “like pizza” within six weeks after payment was made and without having undertaken a course of study in the university, or even leaving the shores of Nigeria.
The Federal Ministry of Education, in a quick response, had announced that it has suspended the evaluation and accreditation of degree certificates from the Republics of Benin and Togo until further notice, while the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) said it had commenced investigation into the degree scandal.
“I think the Honourable Minister (of Education) is doing the right thing. In Nigeria, at times, when we run into one small problem, the solutions could be more disastrous,” Prof. Oloyede told NAN on Friday.
“He has done the right thing by constituting a committee to look into the problem and recommend ways out. The committee will come up with facts and we can now work on those facts,” he said.
The JAMB registrar said while he believed that education was improving, everybody must do his/her part to make the sector greater.
He stated that JAMB would stabilise some of the innovations that were employed on the quality of the works of the body.
