JAMB may not reduce UTME fee

The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, has said the board may not reduce the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) fee for next year.

Oloyede stated this during an interview with journalists in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

He said the board had initially thought of reducing the fee but unwholesome activities of some ‘so-called poor parents’ in 2017 UTME no longer made the reduction attractive.

Oloyede explained that many arrested people during the last UTME had collected huge amounts of money from ‘poor’ parents to seek unlawful support.

“It’s one of the options but what’s militating against it is 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 what people spent in corrupting the society; what parents paid seeking unholy support and that parents are prepared to cut corners showed that if actually they are poor they will not be able to secure the resources they are wasting,” he stated.

On the controversy trailing the huge amount of money returned to the Federal Government coffers by JAMB this year, Oloyede said the board is not a wasteful agency so whatever came in would be appropriately remitted to government.