ICPC, JAMB, DSS Investigated University Admissions In 2021 – Owasanoye

Agency Report

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), alongside Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the Department of State Services (DSS), conducted a series of undercover operations into university admissions process across the country last year.

This was disclosed by the ICPC Chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye SAN, on Tuesday, during his speech at the 4th national summit on diminishing corruption in the public service and the presentation of public Integrity Award.

According to him, ICPC has escalated its prevention mandate in the face of costly, time consuming and unpredictable outcomes of investigation and prosecution.

“In this regard, we are strengthening the Anti-corruption and Transparency Monitoring Unit (ACTU) in MDAs.

“For the education sector, we collaborated with other institutions including NUC and NBTE and much more recently with JAMB our co-host for this event.

“With JAMB and DSS we conducted last year, a series of undercover operations across the country on corruption in the university admissions processes, leading to the busting of syndicates and arrest of its leaders responsible for compromising IJMB and JUPEB,” he said.

He added that ICPC has intensified its scrutiny of personnel and capital cost of MDAs leading to reduction of surpluses or duplications in the budget.

He said: “Just last week the Commission in collaboration with the Budget Office and stakeholders met with some MDAs on the recurring surpluses in their payroll to determine proactive measures to improving the budget process. This is towards separating outright fraud from administrative lapses. We also actively review the budget to prevent abuse by senior civil servants and PEPs who sometimes personalise budgetary allocation for direct benefit. In one case a PEP successfully increased the budget of an agency in order for the agency to buy a property from him. In another case the PEP inserted soft projects worth over N7b for a catchment population of about One million people in the name of empowerment. Both cases are under investigation.

“ICPC’s reviews of special funds meant to improve education delivery such as UBEC and TETFUND reveals continued abuses and breach of procurement standards and compromise of statutory mandates while a System Study and Review on SUBEB in six states for 2019-2020 revealed that the intention of UBE law to support states to improve basic education is frustrated by lack of commitment by state governments in not providing matching grants amongst other defaults. The capacity and commitment of states and tertiary institutions to access UBE fund and TETFUND respectively as anticipated by law remains highly questionable.”

According to Owasanoye, this year’s theme for the national summit has been chosen as “Corruption and the Education Sector, because corruption in education has been rightly described as stealing the future.”

He said, “Once the education sector is corrupted, the foundation for future ethical leadership and labour force is destroyed,” he said.

He added that corruption in education can manifest in different ways.

According to him, they could be in the form of recruitment of unqualified or unfit persons to teach at primary, secondary or tertiary levels.

Other means are: admission racketeering; examination malpractice, diversion of revenue for and within the sector, operation of illegal academic institutions especially at the tertiary level.

He also mentioned abuse of power and procurement rules by management and governing councils both of academic or regulatory institutions etc.

The ICPC Boss said in response to the recent epidemic of sexual harassment in the education sector: “ICPC has constituted a special team on investigation and prosecution of sexual harassment in secondary and tertiary institutions.

“In collaboration with civil society we are in the process of introducing a model policy on sexual harassment for academic institutions to adopt. We have also secured some major convictions including of a professor.”