The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has rolled out modalities for the absorption of returnee students from war-torn countries into Nigerian universities.

This was made known via a statement issued on Wednesday, June 7, by the JAMB spokesperson, Dr Fabian Benjamin.

Benjamin noted that the modalities were follow-ups to the meeting between the Federal Ministry of Education, Federal Ministry of Health, JAMB, Nigeria in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), National Universities Commission (NUC), and other critical stakeholders.

He said the meeting was on the integration of returnee Nigerian students from war-torn countries into the nation’s tertiary education system.

He quoted the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, while presenting the modalities as saying that it was imperative to hold talks with the Vice-Chancellors following the peculiarities of each university and the variation in the responses received from them on the matter.

Oloyede stated that the emergency meeting was, therefore, convened to fashion out uniform standards and minimum acceptable benchmarks for the proposed absorption in line with global best practices.

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He added that the Senate of each university has the right to decide on university transfers and need not wait for JAMB to initiate such adding that the parley with the stakeholders was to present the modalities for critique as well as receive inputs.

The JAMB boss urged the Vice Chancellors to key into the earlier advisory sent to universities on the procedures for processing applications for foreign and domestic inter-university transfers.

Oloyede said the current advisory on the returnees does not override the earlier one but rather served to reinforce it by strengthening the procedures for transfers.

He said: “According to the latest advisory on procedures for emergency transfers of returning students, each of them is mandated to do a retroactive registration with the education ministry.

“They are to visit the returnee application page on IBASS as accessible from the JAMB website, where the returnee students would upload their registration slips, complete the transfer of personal data.

“The personal data would include their name, NIN, telephone number, active e-mail account, current university, country, city of study and programme, year, and current level of study.

“According to the new procedures, the returnee students would select their preferred university of choice, programme and upload the scanned copies of their current university admission letter, transcript, data page of their international passport, and a sworn affidavit confirming the genuineness of uploaded documents.

“The returnee students are directed to click SUBMIT for onward movement to their university of choice, which would receives a notification as well as an IBASS mail on the application for evaluation of the returnee’s credentials. If the returnee is found worthy of admission, a notification is sent to him/her on the status of the admission.

“Consequently, successful returnees students would be directed via email and SMS to approach any JAMB Office in person to complete the inter-university transfer application.”

The JAMB Registrar, however, urged the Vice Chancellors to be vigilant and thoroughly scrutinise the certificates submitted to their institutions to avoid any pitfall that could impugn their hard-earned reputation.

The Star