The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said the board is not responsible for HND admission, programmes or for the predicament and inability of of some graduates to be mobilised for the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
The Registrar of JAMB,Prof Is-haq Oloyede stated this when he met with the leadership of the National Association of Polytechnic Students (NAPS) in his office.
The Registrar told Comrade. Eshofune Paul Oghayan led NAPS that the Board was not responsible for admitting HND students into Polytechnics and, therefore, had no data to facilitate their entry into the NYSC scheme and advised NAPS to channel their grievances to appropriate quarters for redress and solutions.
He explained that the Board’s mandate is limited to conducting examinations for admission into first degree, National Diploma (ND), and Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE) programmes, not HND programmes.
The Registrar also clarified that JAMB only admits students for ND programmes noting that once the candidates graduates and seek HND admission, JAMB has no further role as HND admissions are conducted by individual institutions.
He however stressed that the board conduct admission into tertiary institutions through automated platform, using the Central Admissions Processing System(CAPS).
He told the students Union body that some institutions flagrantly jettisoned,abuse the CAPS introduced to improve the board’s efficiency in the discharge of its mandate.
He pointed out that any admission conducted outside CAPS is null and void, noting that CAPS automate the Admissions Process into the tertiary institutions,streamlines the Admissions Process, addresses the challenges associated with the manual approach, restores the autonomy of the tertiary institutions with respect to admissions, makes candidates the focus and empowers them with information on available choices of institutions and programmes.
Additionally he said CAPS, expands admission opportunities, eliminates multiple admissions, and provides easily retrievable data for decision making and research on the Education Sector in the country,also helps JAMB to refocus on its founding ideals as the Clearing House for admissions into the tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Prof Oloyede stated that “JAMB has structure, everything we do is recorded.There is nothing we do under the carpet.”
He revealed that some institutions runs illegal programmes,some of the programme are daily part-time HND, part-time HND stating that the NYSC rejects some of these unconventional programmes thereby making it impossible for the products to be mobilised.
Prof Oloyede also addressed concerns over part-time polytechnic programmes, stating that his criticism was only directed at “Daily Part-Time” schemes designed to exploit students.
He blamed some of the challenges facing the affected students on institutions which bypass the Central Admissions Processing System(CAPS) to facilitate their admission for ND of more than the number of candidates specified by the NBTE.
He disclosed that the consequence of such an action is that there is no correlation between the ND products and their HND counterparts, which in most cases are acquired in different institutions.
He advised some of the Polytechnic that run foul of these to do the right thing, adding that a Polytechnic had over 42,000 cases of illegal admissions which the institution is still grappling with.
He said” if you do things correctly there would be no problem,on our part we shall continue to render quality service that would be beneficial to all the stakeholders, let’s do thing properly he advised.
