Some intending National Youth Service Corps members for batch ‘A’ 2013, have accused officials of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, of extortion before the they could be issued admission letter.
The alleged extortion is said to be rampant in Enugu and Owerri offices of JAMB.
The admission letter is requested by various school managements as evidence to prove to NYSC that the intending corps members wrote the exam.
This came as the board’s office in Lagos said it did not have the technical capacity to attend to the prospective corps members.
It would be recalled that the NYSC in collaboration with JAMB issued a new directive that graduates preparing for NYSC must provide their Unified Matriculation Tertiary Examination registration numbers before they are mobilized.
The officials were accused of demanding between N3,000 and N5,000 per person before attending to them.
A graduate of Federal University of Technology, FUTO, who was among several intending corps members who besieged Lagos office, told Vanguard on condition of anonymity that since Lagos office said it had no capacity to issue the letter, his last option would be to go to Owerri where officials of JAMB were demanding N5,000 for the letter.
Another graduate of Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, Enugu, claimed he had to come to Lagos office after a relation that volunteered to get the letter from JAMB’s office, Enugu, called to inform him that they were demanding between N3,000 to N4,000 before the letter could be released.
Attempts to reach JAMB Registrar, Prof Dibu Ojerinde proved abortive as there was no response to several calls and text messages.
Vanguard gathered that the 2013 batch ‘A’ list was released in various schools across the country last Friday with many of the graduates falling under NYSC error list which was attributed to the inability of JAMB to rectify the candidates’ registration numbers.
For instance, at the University of Lagos, UNILAG, about 100 persons fell into the error list.
At IMT, Enugu, only 45 persons were mobilised while 1,290 persons fell under the error list. Similarly, at FUTO, less than 20 per cent of those shortlisted were mobilized while about 80 per cent fell in the error list.
A check by Vanguard in the Lagos office of JAMB revealed that the many prospective corps members besieged the premises yesterday to get their JAMB admission letter only to be told that the Lagos office was not in a position to handle such.
One of the receptionists, (names withheld), said the Lagos office could not handle such inquiry as it had no facility equipped with students’ data.
She directed all prospective corps members to a directive pasted on the receptionist’s office which read that all those who wrote UMTE exam before 2008 should go to Abuja for their admission.
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