The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has released an additional 531 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination results.

JAMB said the newly results were the 64,000 earlier withheld because the candidates were suspected to have committed infractions

The board disclosed this in a statement, by its spokesman, Fabian Benjamin.

The said: “As promised, the Board is proceeding with the screening of over 64,000 withheld results. It has, however, released additional 531 results taking the total number of results released to 1,842,897. In the course of the exercise, other cases of examination misconduct were also established to make a tally of 92 from the 81 initially discovered.

“The Board is also looking at cases of unverified candidates and would soon come up with a position.

“Similarly, the attention of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board(JAMB) has been drawn to some fallacious publications purporting that an unknown candidate, who did not sit the Board’s 2024 UTME, obtained scores.

“This is fake, malicious and a calculated attempt to undermine the integrity of the Board. The public is urged to disregard such irresponsible publications.

“To underscore the fact that the publication is crafted by mischief makers to paint the Board in bad light, the publication, which levels such a grievous allegation, has no details of the candidate for proper verification.

“The Board is not surprised as this is the season of mischief makers, who would want to deceive gullible candidates. The examination template of the Board is designed with the highest sense of responsibility and is not an allocation platform where scores are doled out to candidates.

“It is most unfortunate that anybody could even believe such narration or that the story could even gain traction given the Board’s integrity.

“This again has gone to further vindicate the Board’s stance that candidates should desist from disclosing their classified details to third-parties.

“In investigating some of these allegations, the Board discovered that some of these mischief makers copy results sent to other candidates, edit the details sent to themselves and then parade this as emanating from the Board.

“The Board challenges any candidate, parent or anybody with such a claim or information to prove it wrong by coming forward with the details of such claims and the phone number with which such results were conveyed.

“The attitude of these mischief makers would only propel the Board to further tighten the process of checking its results to make it more personalized and sure would be stringent when it should actually be a simple and straightforward exercise.

“The Board reiterated that neither its results nor any of its processes have been compromised. Hence, it will continue to protect the integrity of its systems against such malicious actors, who are hell-bent on creating confusion where none existed.

“Consequently, the Board is primed to adding more features like registration number to the existing UTME Result checking process going forward to make it extra difficult for anybody to edit.

“Candidates are, therefore, urged to securely keep their details secure for if they are found associating with any of these mischievous elements, they would be treated as collaborators.

“For now, the method of checking the 2024 UTME remains sending UTMERESULT to 55019 or 66019 and not through any other process. The result, at the moment, is not on the Board’s website.”

The management of Oduduwa Polytechnic, Lagos, has denied media report that a lecturer in the institution was  extorting a female student and withhold her results.

According to the report, the student, one Jesulayomi Adedini, allegedly accused a lecturer of the institution, whose name was given as Ogunjana Adeolu of extortion and deliberate attempt to frustrate her graduation from school.

But the school, in a statement, copy of which was sent to The Post, stated: “The attention of the Management of the Oduduwa Polytechnic, Lagos has been drawn to a story published in The Punch of today titled: ‘Osun poly student accuses lecturer of extortion, withholding result.

“Contrary to what was published in The Punch, we wish to state that our institution, Oduduwa Polytechnic had nothing to do with the said story.

“We don’t have any record of both the staff and the student in our database.

“We, therefore, implore the members of the public to disregard the said story as it had nothing to do with our institution.”

President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday signed the National Students Loan Amendment bill into law.

The President signed the bill in a short ceremony at the State House in the presence of the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, Deputy President of the Senate, Barau Jibrin, The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, the Minister and Minister of State for Education, Hannatu Musawa, the Minister of State for Youth, Ayodele Olawande, the president of the National Association of Nigerian Students, other government officials and aides to the president.

Tinubu initially signed the student loan bill into law back in June 2023, to offer financial assistance to Nigerian students in tertiary institutions.

While the bill was signed earlier, its implementation has faced delays due to various issues hindering its rollout.

Speaking afterwards, the president said, “ First of all, I must thank members of the National Assembly for their expeditious handling of this bill considering the children of Nigeria, that education is the tool to fight against poverty effectively.”

“We are determined to ensure that education is given the proper attention necessary for the country including skills development programmes. This is to ensure that no one, no matter how poor their background is, is excluded from quality education and opportunity to build their future.”

“We are here because we are all educated and were helped. In the past, we have seen a lot of our children drop out of college and give up the opportunity. That is no more, the standard and the control is there for you to apply no matter who you are as long as you are a Nigerian citizen.”

This development came after separate considerations from the two chambers of the National Assembly committees on tertiary institutions and TETFund.