The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board on Thursday said it has discovered one million illegal institutional admissions so far.

The board said it was surprised that less than five per cent of such students’ details had been uploaded on the board portal by the institutions as required.

It blamed the inability of some candidates to obtain their admission letters which would qualify them to proceed on the one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps or obtain exemption letters on the illegal admissions.

In a statement by its Head, Media and Protocol, Fabian Benjamin, the board said this phenomenon was especially true of products of undisclosed illegal institutional admissions conducted outside the Central Admissions Processing System between 2017 and 2020.

The statement said: “The series of complaints emanated from the frustrations of these set of students who are expressing anger at the lack of formal recognition of their degrees by relevant authorities.

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“Consequently, the  Minister of Education, Mall. Adamu Adamu had out of compassion, approved a final condonement of these underhand admissions.

“It should be recalled that based on that act of magnanimity, the board had placed relevant advertisements in three national dailies (Blueprint, Guardian and Vanguard) of 24th November 2021. The same notice was featured on the board’s website coupled with an easy-to-use advisory issued to all institutions of higher learning to guide them on how these candidates could be redeemed.”

The board further stated, “It is even more egregious to note that even among the few that had been uploaded by the schools on the board portal, many of the schools had not correctly keyed in their details.

“The board, therefore, uses this medium to appeal to institutions to immediately upload appropriately the matriculation numbers, names, disciplines, year of graduation and other necessary details of the candidates for the board to process the candidates’ condonement applications.”