Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, has approved the establishment of Advanced Level (A Level) certificates data bank in the country.

Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, made this known on Tuesday in Abuja at the opening session of a 3-day workshop for Public Relations’ staff of the Board.

The workshop organised in collaboration with Premium Times Academy, has its theme as, ‘Media, Publicity And Public Relations In The Modern Age.’

Speaking at the workshop, Oloyede, represented by JAMB’s Director, Legal Services, Dr Abdul Wahab Oyedokun, said the Board has taken several measures to ensure total sanity in its examination processes.

While listing some of the measures to include deployment of sophisticated biometric technology to curb multiple registration in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Oloyede said the Board has taken another major step to put an end to use of fake A Level certificates to secure admission.

“We also collaborated with others security services to spread our net across the country to see what is happening and lo and behold more than 47 proprietors of these, and some of their lecturers and teachers, and people conniving with them in perpetrating malpractices were arrested all over the country (during last exams).

For example, in a particular university, 90% of those who presented their A level results for admission were found to be fake,” the JAMB boss said.

According to Oloyede, the data bank will ensure all A Level results are registered under one platform to bring about standardisation and integrity of the certificates.

In a presentation, Oloyede also revealed that from 2017 to 2022, a total of ₦27.2 billion was remitted to Federal Government’s coffers by the Board while ₦9.7 billion was used for capital projects in the same period.

He gave the breakdown of the remittances as 2017-₦7.8 billion, 2018-₦5.2 billion, 2019-₦3.76 billion, 2020 – ₦4 billion, 2021 – ₦3.5 billion and 2022 – ₦3 billion.