In 2019, Adisa, other names withheld, was given admission to study Accountancy by the then Lagos State Polytechnic, LASPOTECH. He was to attend classes at the Isolo Campus of the institution.
His father became worried because there was no printout of the admission letter from the portal of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, though the boy wrote the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, that year.
Going by the processes laid down by the Board, all admissions are to be processed through the Central Admissions Processing Systems, CAPS.
The boy and his colleagues were told by the school authorities that they were admitted through the Daily Part Time, DPT and that they would be attending classes and. be sitting for the same examinations like those whose admissions were done through CAPS.
For three years, the boy was still on the National Diploma course and was going to school daily. The promise by the school that they would streamline their admissions in line with JAMB’s dictates so that they would be able to print their admission letters from the JAMB portal has not been fulfilled up till now.
Even with his ND programme finally completed after three years, the hapless boy has not been able to move on educationally. LASPOTECH has been converted to a university, he cannot secure admission to another polytechnic for his Higher National Diploma, HND, course, as the admission letter from JAMB regarding his ND programme is required.
The above is different from institutions overshooting their admission quotas, especially in professional courses like Law, Medicine, and Nursing among others, leading to some students being unable to go to Law School or be inducted by their professional bodies.
The story is the same all over the country and almost all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education are guilty.
As of about a year ago, higher institutions in the country have conducted over 470,000 illegal admissions
Why do institutions engage in illegal admissions
An educationist, Mr Kolapo Akinleye, opined that most of the institutions engage in illegal admissions because of the need to raise money
“For federal institutions, most of the fees they generate from regular students are paid into the Treasury Single Account, TSA. That has limited their access to the funds. But what they do is to hide under their consultancy arms, and come up with all these programmes.
They have the real part-time programmes, they also have the ones that are part-time but which they disguise as full-time, their DPT programmes. The fees are usually higher than the regular ones.
“ Another reason they engage in the act is the demand for admission spaces by applicants.
Yearly, over one million applicants are not offered admission through the UTME or Direct Entry channel. Some of the affected candidates seek succour in the part-time programmes and others. You can’t blame them as our society places too much emphasis on paper qualifications, “ he noted.
JAMB’s big stick
However, JAMB has vowed to curb illegal admissions and has given the institutions one month to disclose their figures or be severely sanctioned. The Board said the admissions conducted outside CAPS before 2017 should be made public.
Dr. Fabian Benjamin, Public Communication Advisor for JAMB, said: “The attention of the Board has been drawn to the predilection of some institutions to admit candidates outside the approved Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) platform and process such through the condonement of illegal admissions window to accord legitimacy.
“To close this abused window, the Board has decided that: all institutions should now (or never) disclose all candidates illegally admitted before 2017 whose records are in their system within the next one month beginning from 1st August 2024; and any admission purportedly given before 2017 will no longer be recognised or condoned unless disclosed within this one-month window.
“Institutions are advised to comply with this directive as there will not be any further confinement of hitherto unrecorded candidates who did not even register with JAMB not to talk of sitting for any entrance examination. This move is aimed at curbing illegal admissions and falsification of records while ensuring compliance with the provisions of CAPS.”
He said the decision marks the end of the Condonement of Illegal Admissions window, which previously allowed institutions to incorporate unauthorized admissions into the system.
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