...Closes Sale of 2018 UTME, over 1.6m candidates
registered
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB)
on Tuesday vowed to arrest and prosecute the mysterious ‘snake’ and other staff that
must have assisted the disappearance of N36 million from its Benue State office.
This is coming as the board announced that the sale
of 2018 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) application is closed
with over 1.6 million candidates successfully completed their registration.
The Head of Media and Public Relations of JAMB, Dr.
Fabian Benjamin, disclosed this in a statement, saying the board
would deploy all available resources to arrest and prosecute anyone found undermining
the integrity of the board irrespective of who is involved.
On the snake issue, Benjamin said the board
maintain that there is no hiding place
for any form of crime to thrive in the running of the board’s activities.
He recalled that the Professor Ishaq Oloyede-led
management had on assumption of duty embarked on a tour of the board's state
offices to ascertain their actual financial standing and their general
operations.
According to him, some of the reforms introduced by
Oloyede when he assumed office in 2016 included the recommendation of an end to
the use of scratch cards, replacing it with more efficient and effective modes
of pin vending.
The JAMB spokesman noted that the UTME candidates
had before now purchased scratch cards from “our offices nationwide and
designated centres to gain access to the board's website for either
registration or other essential services.”
Oloyede revealed that it is in the process of the
routine audit and other checks of state offices account and activities that an
official in charge of the Benue State office of the board was found wanting in
an effort to give an accurate account of the proceeds realised from the sales
of the cards.
He stated: "We are not going to take lightly
our fight against corruption no matter who is involved.
"We are going to unravel, arrest and prosecute
this alleged ‘mysterious snake’, just as we are going to bring to book any of
our officers or stakeholders who is caught in any activities not in line with
the board's policies.
"A number of persons have indeed been
discovered to have misappropriated funds belonging to the board, and the one at
hand currently is one of such numerous cases of misappropriation in the state
offices.
"Another of such cases uncovered by the
Oloyede management-led team is that of a state officer who also failed to give
account of monies realised from the sales of the card but rather claimed that
he was on his way to return some unsold
scratch cards when he was involved in a car crash and the car was burnt with
the cards.
"He had claimed that all the cards then got
burnt in the process, just as he failed to account for those sold before the
ban on the use of scratch cards.
"We want to carry out careful scrutiny of
government funds as well as block all leakages and loop holes."
Benjamin stated that the board would not leave any
stone unturned in its fight to stamp out corruption in its activities.
He stressed that JAMB would not condone or hide any
act of misconduct, no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant it may be to the board
or any stakeholder.
To this end, he said the board has deployed
machineries to fight corruptions, infractions, and admission malpractice, financial
misappropriation in a total and comprehensive manner.
“There will be no sacred cow, be it a staff of the board
or any stakeholder partnering the board,” he stated.
On the UTME, Benjamin urged the public to note that all
candidates who paid and obtained pins and could not successfully registered at
the close of sale are allowed to quickly within 24hrs complete their
registration as no complaints would be entertained afterwards.
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