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Former Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has blamed parents, not candidates, for the persistent rise in examination malpractice, accusing many of introducing their children to criminality in their quest for academic success.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE News, Oloyede described parents’ involvement in examination fraud as the most painful aspect of his years at the examination body, saying many candidates were pressured by adults rather than acting on their own.
“The most painful period of my experience in JAMB had to do with the level of involvement of parents in the organisation of examination malpractice,” he said.
He lamented that some parents deliberately exposed their children to dishonest practices instead of teaching them integrity.
“They are introducing their wards, their children, to the world of crime. Most of the candidates are not problematic. They are not the problem. The problem are the parents,” Oloyede stated.
The former registrar said he often became emotional whenever he encountered such cases because parents were compromising the future of the next generation.
“Every time I was confronted with the reality of what parents were doing, most of the time I became very emotional. How on earth will people hate themselves and hate their future to this level? Even if you have deficiencies, you wouldn’t want to pass them to the next generation, but that’s what many parents do,” he added.
Oloyede’s remarks come more than a year after the widely publicised Mmesoma Ejikeme controversy, which drew national attention to examination malpractice.
In 2023, Mmesoma, a student from Anambra State, claimed she scored 362 in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and was celebrated as the country’s highest scorer.
However, JAMB later revealed that the result was forged using a manipulated printout, insisting her actual score was 249.
The development sparked a nationwide debate involving the student, her family, the Anambra State Government and JAMB before an independent panel concluded that the result had indeed been falsified.
Reflecting on the incident, Oloyede said the Mmesoma case was not unique, noting that JAMB had handled numerous similar cases over the years.
“Mesoma was just sensationalised by a group of people who felt they wanted to defend that. We met more than 10 Mesoma cases. Even last year, somebody still attempted something like that. We deal with such situations. It was a normal thing to us. Unfortunately, the sensation that came along with Mesoma made it unique to others who were outside the institution,” he said.
Oloyede also disclosed that he has no plans to write an autobiography, explaining that doing so would require him to reveal sensitive events from his years in public service.
“If I must say it, I would say everything, and some of the everything may not be good. For now, I do not intend to put up any write-up or give a narration of what happened,” he said.
