On Tuesday, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) authorities authorized the apprehension of some agents of an accredited online payment service approved for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), for allegedly charging above the approved price for JAMB registration.
Speaking on this issue, the board’s Head of Media, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, disclosed to newsmen while monitoring the Joint admission and matriculation board UTME/Direct Entry (DE) registration in Bwari, FCT Abuja.
According to Fabian, the agents who worked for the Unified Payments Services (UPS) went against the fundamental rules of the Board, and charged some candidates the sum of Four thousand five hundred Naira (N4,500), as against the federal government and JAMB authority agreed approved cost of (four thousand Naira) N4,000, for the UTME registration.
Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Fabian disclosed that the agents, who operated in shops situated opposite the JAMB Computer-Based Test (CBT) center, Kogo in Bwari. He said and I quote below:
“What we are seeing now is quite unfortunate and disappointing, because we had a meeting with accredited vendors before now and agreed that out of the N3,500 generated for each e-pin, they have a N210 commission. This means they get N210 out of every N3,500 used to purchase the UTME registration form.
The essence of the sacrifice is to ensure that no candidate is exploited by the UPS guys.
“The truth is that when a vendor wants to have agents, they should be willing to have their interest at heart and pay them from his commission because we have no business with these agents.
However, the Federal Government’s directive to JAMB management, is that we should be selling these forms for nothing more than N4,000; N3,500 for e-pin and N500 for the English reading text. JAMB registration centers are to take N700 for registration.
“We pointed this out to vendors that it was a directive from the Nigerian presidency so that Nigerians are not exploited and we are ready to protect this directive.
