… Bello revealed, BUK expelled 500 students with fake results
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has uncovered 520 fake Advanced Level results used for Direct Entry (DE) admissions across the country, through its Nigeria Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (NIPEDS).
According to the JAMBulletin report, Yahuza Bello, the chairman at NIPEDS, disclosed this at the 2025 Policy Meeting on Admissions into tertiary institutions in Nigeria held at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025.
The former vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, disclosed that the committee, in the course of verifying the certificates of some Direct Entry candidates for the year 2019 – 2024, had discovered that 520 of the certificates presented were fake.
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Bello further disclosed that appropriate action had been taken against these fraudulent candidates. Breaking down the figures, he said that the NCE programme alone generated 213 fake certificates out of the 9,460 screened by NIPEDS, stressing that the board’s system had been sufficiently updated to prevent candidates with fake certificates, be it IJMB, Cambridge or JUPEB, from applying for direct entry admission.
The former university don revealed that between September 2019 and April 2024, the Senate of Bayero University, Kano, expelled over 500 students found to have gained admission with fake or altered credentials, and the majority of these students were admitted through direct entry.
He said this alarming trend was a clear indication of the scope of the problem and would require the collective efforts of all to address.
Bello, however, traced the root cause of the rampant cases of certificate forgery to the carelessness of some universities, which would not bother themselves with verifying the entry qualifications presented by the candidates they admit, thereby admitting candidates with fake or altered qualifications.
“Going forward, NIPEDS would be further strengthened to fulfil its desire to consolidate on the establishment of a database of all recognised post-secondary education qualifications in Nigeria.
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“The existing database has enabled JAMB to verify the qualifications presented by DE applicants, while the verification status of each applicant is being made available to the various institutions for their guidance,” he said.
Besides, Bello disclosed that NIPEDS had been able to document the qualifications of DE applicants, while also quantifying as well as arranging the applicants for each programme in all universities in order of merit, as has been done with UTME applicants.
In addition, he said that all direct entry admissions are now being conducted on the JAMB CAPS platform in a very transparent, fair and objective manner.
