Since graduation from the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Oyo State, in 2019, over 1,000 students have longed in vain for the national youth service.

The students gained admission through the school’s pre-degree programme in 2013. Although they failed the 2014 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME), LAUTECH admitted them to its degree programmes.

“Some of us passed the pre-degree programme but did not pass UTME. But despite this, the school offered us admission in 2014,” Julius (not real name), one of the affected students, told FIJ.

“However, we were required to get an admission letter from JAMB for the purpose of admission regularisation. This is because a school admission without a JAMB admission letter is nothing.”

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According to Julius, each of the students in the group got a registration number from LAUTECH and was told to pay N5,300 to JAMB, through its website, for a provisional admission letter.

“This payment was said to be for the purpose of admission regularisation, so our names could be on JAMB’s matriculation portal. After completing the process, were able to print out JAMB’s provisional admission letters from the website,” Julius said.

By this time, said Jaiye, one of the affected students, those who passed UTME, had got their admission letters.

“Unlike those who entered through JAMB, the only letter we got after completing our pre-degree courses was the provisional admission letter we printed out ourselves when we visited JAMB’s website for regularisation back then,” he said.

FIJ gathered that the affected students never got their full-fledged admission letters from JAMB throughout their stay in LAUTECH from 2014 to 2019.

“We never knew the school did not do their own part of the exercise by getting our names documented as admitted students on JAMB’s portal. It only became obvious during the second semester of our 400-level, when a matriculation list came out, and we could not find our names,” Julius said.

“The admission letter would have confirmed that our names were properly documented on the JAMB’s matriculation portal, but we never received any throughout our programmes. Now, we don’t even know when all this would be sorted out so we can go for youth service, too.”

After some of their mates in the school were mobilised and went for the mandatory one-year national youth service, the affected students visited the JAMB office in Ibadan but were told they were suffering from LAUTECH’s negligence.

“In October, another batch will go for service and, going by what is on ground, it is not even certain we’ll make the list. It is quite sad that the journey we started in 2013 has still not come to a meaningful end. It is frustrating. Over 1,000 students are affected,” Jaiye lamented.

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When FIJ contacted Professor Ademola Ige, LAUTECH’s Dean of Student Affairs, he said JAMB caused the problem and that it was not the school’s responsibility to regularise the information of the affected students on the portal.

“JAMB is the one creating the problem,” he said. “It is not peculiar to LAUTECH; other schools across the country are going through this as well.”

“We have been battling with that over time. Since this new JAMB registrar came on board, he has been introducing different policies that have not been student-`friendly. This time they would tell us this is the procedure and another time, they would say the procedure has changed.”

However, Ige said that the school was communicating with JAMB and that all issues would be sorted out by the end of September.

FIJ placed several calls to the Ibadan office of JAMB, but they were not answered. There was also no response to the text message sent.