*As Ojerinde berates parents for aiding exam  fraud

BY GBENGA ARIYIBI

ADO-EKITI – The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has dismissed no fewer than six of its staff for alleged examinations racketeering in the last one year.

Registrar of JAMB, Professor Dibu Ojerinde,  disclosed this in Ado Ekiti yesterday during a meeting of the Coordinators for the 2011 UTME.

The JAMB boss noted that his establishment had zero tolerance for fraudulent activities and vowed that JAMB would not hesitate to flush out the bad eggs among its staff.

Ojerinde, who did not spare members of the public in given the organisation a bad image, lamented that some prominent Nigerians approached some of his staff to manipulate results of JAMB for their wards, sons or daughters, stressing that those in this infamous acts were enemies of the country.

Ojerinde appealed to prospective JAMB applicants to always prepare hard and cover their syllabuses before venturing to obtain the JAMB forms, saying the organisation had device mechanism for detecting examination malpractices.

According to him, “Some of our workers who compromised the conduct of JAMB examinations in the past were dismissed from the service and we will not hesitate to do more. We have to set a standard for the future of our dear country and in doing this, we have to be focused and be disciplined.

“JAMB examination is now a survival of the fittest where only students that are prepared for it could only scale through.”

He said the fusion of the universities and polytechnics matriculation examinations into UTME had reduced the operational costs of the Board in the conduct of the examinations.

Ojerinde noted that the device had helped in checkmating drudgery being experienced in the conduct of different examinations for admission seekers into various Nigeria universities and polytechnics.

Speaking, the state Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, described education as a tool for national development, stressing that “education sector is prioritized in the policy thrust of the eight-point agenda of his administration.”

The governor who was represented by his Deputy, Mrs Funmi Olayinka, disclosed that his government had zero tolerance to examination fraud, saying “it is imperative for all examination bodies to devise means of ridding the system of any form of malpractice to put the nation on a sound footing of development.