Former Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has blamed parents, rather than candidates, for driving examination malpractice in Nigeria.

Oloyede described their involvement as the most painful experience of his 10-year tenure at the examination body.

Speaking during an interview on ThisDay Live on Sunday, Oloyede said many parents deliberately introduce their children to dishonest practices in a bid to secure admission into higher institutions.

He stated, “The most painful period of my experience in JAMB had to do with the level of involvement of parents in organisation of examination malpractice.”

“They are introducing their wards, their children to the world of criminality.”

The former JAMB registrar maintained that candidates were often not the masterminds of examination fraud, insisting that parents played a more significant role in encouraging the practice.

He said, “I have no difficulty. And I think most of the candidates are not problematic. They are not the problem. The problem are the parents.”

Oloyede said he was often emotionally affected whenever he encountered cases involving parents facilitating examination malpractice.

He said, “Every time I was confronted with the reality of what parents were doing. It’s most of the time I became very emotional about it because I just felt that how on heart will people hate themselves, hate their future to this level.”

According to him, even parents with personal shortcomings should not transfer such behaviour to their children.

He said, “Because it’s like, even if you have deficiency, you wouldn’t want to pass the deficiency to the next generation. But that’s what many people do with their parents.”

Reflecting on some of the controversies that trailed his tenure, including the widely publicised “snake swallowed money” incident, Oloyede argued that many of such episodes were sensationalised.

He said, “The snake matter did not occur when I was there. It was just that I have to deal with the matter. The matter had occurred before I assumed office. It was just that as the registrar of JAMB, I had to address the matter and I thank God with the way I dealt with. When the matter was treated, I insisted that we must record. We must have it on tape and we recorded because it was unbelievable.

“There was no snake but it was unbelievable to us that someone could say that. The reality of it was that the person was almost denying it if not that we recorded it. I would have disbelieved myself if we did not have a tape, a recording of the narration of what happened. But that’s part of the fun because many people took it literally and they believed that snake was swallowing money in JAMB and that was part of the fun. But that never happened.”

Speaking on whether an institution can admit undergraduate programme without going through JAMB he said, “It is not possible. By law, by regulation, there is no institution that can admit undergraduate programme without going through JAMB as far as I know today. If that happens, It is illegal and it is improper.”

Oloyede served as JAMB registrar from August 2016 to July 31, 2026.

During his tenure, the board intensified the deployment of technology to curb examination malpractice, dismantled several impersonation and result-falsification syndicates, and repeatedly warned parents against aiding candidates to cheat during the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination. (Vanguard)

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