By Gloria Emmanuel The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Dibu Ojerinde Thursday accused the management of tertiary institutions of sending names of “groundnut sellers” to JAMB for regularization.
This was as the management of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) also accused the management of tertiary institutions of frustrating full deployment of ICT in NYSC youth corps mobilisation process.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ojerinde, while making a remark at the 2015 Batch ‘A’ Pre-mobilisation Workshop in Abuja, disclosed that JAMB experienced some frustration from higher institutions due to undue pressure they mount in violation of the rules.
Speaking specifically on the deployment of ICT in mobilisation of corps members, Ojerinde commended the NYSC for fully deploying ICT in its mobilisation process.
He added that most of the Corps Producing Institutions (CPIs) “should be ashamed of themselves for resisting the noble change and sanity which NYSC is bringing to the system”.
He added that some the CPIs had been sending names of “groundnut sellers to JAMB for regularization, even when JAMB had insisted that it was done with regularization”.
He maintained that the cost of accessing the NYSC ICT infrastructure was a million times better than the risks which prospective Corps members faced shuttling to their schools for mobilisation.
On his part, the Director-General of the NYSC, Brig-Gen JB Olawumi in his opening remarks accused some CPI of not living up to the agreement of appropriately sensitising their graduating students on the benefits of the newly introduced ICT registration platform.
According to him, “I wish to state without equivocation that the co-operation we got from some Corps Producing Institutions (CPIs) on the foregoing were quite discouraging.
“While some CPIs stuck to the old mobilisation methods which they were used to, some joined the campaign of calumny to frustrate the project by misinforming their students, while others simply sent their students on sight-seeing to the NYSC Directorate Headquarters instead of liaising with the relevant authorities to find answers to the problems of their students”.
Olawumi maintained that there was no going back on the deployment of ICT in line with global practices, but assured that the NYSC management would continually engage all stakeholders in dialogue until an equilibrium point of the benefits of the ICT is reached.
He applauded the resolution of previous stakeholders’ workshop which had agreed no less on the desirability of ICT in corps mobilisation and other operations.
He further charged institutions Students Affairs Officers to do the needful and fully cooperate with the NYSC on the deployment of the ICT platform, stressing that the benefits cannot be over-emphasised.
Earlier, the Director of Corps Mobilisation, Mr. Anthony Ani, who explained that the theme of the pre-mobilisation workshop tagged “Deepening the Credibility of NYSC Mobilisation Process through ICT” was designed to further ensure greater understanding of the stakeholders.
He advised the CPIs to avoid uploading or forwarding graduates of non-accredited courses or those who did not follow the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) procedure for mobilisation, pointing out that only the outcome of the NYSC liaison with the NUC and NBTE would be accepted for mobilisation.
“All CPIs should please avail themselves of the opportunity of interacting with them to address any issue bordering on courses and accreditations, as the NYSC will only accept the institutions and courses approved by these bodies for the NYSC mobilisation,” Ani stressed.
