Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has advised the National Association of Polytechnic Students (NAPS) to direct their grievances regarding the non-mobilisation of some Higher National Diploma (HND) students for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to the appropriate authorities.
JAMB’s registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, who gave the advice while speaking with the leadership of NAPS yesterday, said the board does not oversee the admission of HND students and therefore has no role in their mobilisation for the NYSC.
Oloyede, who expressed surprise that JAMB is being targeted by the association on the issue, described the action as being out from sheer ignorance of the mandate of the board.
“You are wasting your time talking to someone who has no involvement in the matter. If something affects you, the first step is to identify the root cause so that you don’t apply the wrong solution to a problem that does not exist,” Oloyede said.
He explained that JAMB’s mandate is limited to conducting examinations for admission into universities, national diploma (ND) and Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE) programmes, not HND programmes.
“We admit students for ND programmes. Once you graduate and seek HND admission, JAMB has no further role. HND admissions are conducted by individual institutions,” he said.
The NAPS leadership led by its national president, Comrade Ridwan Opeyemi and senate president, Adeniki Temitope, expressed satisfaction with Oloyede’s explanations and pledged to engage the appropriate authorities on the mobilisation issue.
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 also blamed some of the challenges of affected students on institutions that admit more than the capacity specified by the NBTE.
“NBTE asks them to admit 100 students for instance, they will take that 100 and register them for full time ND. They will take another 1000 and they will be teaching them in the same class and will say those ones are part-time,” he said.
He also disclosed that there was a challenge of correlation between the ND which students have acquired and HND which in most cases are acquired in different institutions.
He advised NAPS to thoroughly investigate the problem to uncover the root causes and solutions.
“Go and study the problem in detail, and if you do, you will find the solution,” he advised.
Addressing allegations of extortion by JAMB officials in the South-South zone, Oloyede disclosed that the board received an anonymous petition and had deployed a team to investigate the claims.