Students from about 155 institutions may be barred from processing Direct Entry admissions owing to failed verification from their certificates awarding institutions, findings by Sunday PUNCH have revealed.
The registration for DE examinations, it was gathered, is set to commence on February 28, 2024.
In February 2023, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) issued an advisory to guide candidates seeking to gain admissions through Direct Entry in the 2023/2024 academic session.
According to JAMB, the advisory was basically to address the issue of candidates using unacceptable or forged A-level certificates/ qualifications to gain admission.
The newspaper noted that JAMB advised the candidates to contact their former institutions as soon as possible to have their certificates verified, stressing that it would not accept students with unverified certificates.
It quotes JAMB as stating that it had written to all tertiary institutions that issued certificates and that a substantial number of them had answered positively, but others had not.
A memo by JAMB to some of the institutions sighted by PUNCH in Abuja read in part: “As you are aware, the Board had introduced measures to help address the discovered unenvisaged tricks and sharp practices by candidates who intended to use unacceptable or forged A’ level certificates/qualifications to gain admission. One of the measures was the verification of the claimed qualifications with the awarding bodies/institutions.
“Institutions awarding A’ Level qualifications, degrees, and diplomas had been requested, through the central admissions processing system to verify the authenticity of the qualifications and results presented by candidates to the board for admission.”
According to the newspaper, the letters and follow-ups made by the board to institutions to verify the claimed certificates, 2,795 are yet to be verified from 155 institutions.