After uncovering 706,189 illegal admissions by universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other related institutions, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said it will soon clear the backlog of illegal admissions conducted by tertiary education institutions in the country.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja on Sunday, JAMB’s Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, said the move is to rescue students who have the requisite qualifications but were admitted illegally.

“On the issue of illegal admission that we want to put a halt to, we want to clear the backlog and ensure that those of them who have been improperly admitted but have the minimum qualification are rescued.

We want to continue the campaign to discourage those who are committing such illegal action to stop doing such,” Oloyede said.

On the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Oloyede said the Board has decided to adopt a cashless system in the registration process, adding that JAMB would also prohibit Computer Based Test (CBT) centres from selling e-PINs to guard against extortion of candidates.

“On our campaign on cashless CBT centres particularly, during our registration exercise, it is known that many CBT centres, despite the supervision, still manage to exploit candidates.

We want to put a stop to that. We have intensified monitoring but part of what we are doing is to ensure we protect the students against this extortion, and that is why we are asking the candidates to pay through us and we will pay the centres their service charge. With this, anybody who collects money from the centre would have been seen to have done a wrong thing because you are not supposed to collect any money.

“We are also going to ensure that e-PIN is not something that they will be selling at the (CBT) centres. We will ensure that anybody who wants to sell e-PIN will not be a CBT centre. Once you are a CBT centre, you have lost the right to sell e-PIN so that we can hold the e-PIN sellers responsible for what they do.

Once you are a CBT centre, you cannot also say you want to s ell e-PIN,” he said.