Date: 2017-10-16

The Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Is-haq Oloyede said the board may not review downward the fee for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 2018.

Oloyede stated this at the weekend in an interview with newsmen in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

He said the Board had initially thought of reducing the fee but unwholesome activities of the so-called poor parents in 2017 UTME, no longer make the reduction attractive as it was at the beginning.

Prof Oloyede explained that many arrested during the last UTME had collected huge amount of money from the so-called poor parents while seeking unholy support.

"It's one of the options but what's mitigating against that I'm not convinced and I don't think the Board too is convinced that the so-called poor people are genuinely poor.

"Our findings have revealed that what people spent in corrupting the society, what parents paid for seeking unholy support and what parents are prepared to part with 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."

On the controversies trailing the huge amount return to the federal government coffer by JAMB this year, Oloyede said JAMB is not a wasteful agency and whatever comes in would be appropriately remitted to the government.

He promised that the Board would be strengthened to make it a self-sustaining one as obtainable across the world.

"I am not aware of any agency with the nature of JAMB in the world that is being funded by government. But in Nigeria, because, we are used to something that is not proper and to get us out of what's improper will even be strange."

The Registrar however pledged that the Board would improve on its activities in the coming years, calling on all stakeholders in the education sector to be up and doing and be honest in the discharge of their responsibilities.