Our tertiary institutions bedeviled by corruption – NUC boss

Executive Secretary, Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, says higher institutions in the country are bedeviled by corruption.

He spoke in Abuja yesterday at the maiden meeting of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) management with registrars of corps-producing institutions in Nigeria.

He also blamed academic instability on lack of uniform calendar for institutions to run their activities.

Registrar, Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, said between 2017 and 2021, about one million candidates were illegally admitted into institutions.

He said corruption and illegal admissions occurred in state higher institutions because state governments established them without having funds to run them.

Oloyede said JAMB had yet to release the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination results because of some internal appraisal.

He said: “We don’t want this situation where you release results and you start to withdraw some. So, we’ve asked people to submit reports, particularly of malpractices.”

Director-General, NYSC, Major-General Ibrahim Shuaibu, said the meeting was to seek ways of eliminating increasing flaws in the NYSC mobilisation process.

He said in schools where registrars had abdicated their roles to subordinate officers, various forms of abuses and shortfalls were noticed.

He said this had given rise to occasional mobilisation of unqualified persons, many of whom had been detected and fished out by NYSC field officers.

“Management is now determined more than ever to tighten loopholes and commence the prosecution of anyone found complicit in the mobilisation of unqualified persons.

“This meeting is therefore part of enlightenment for the key officers to rise up to their responsibilities because ignorance is a stranger to the law,” he said.