UNILORIN WITHDRAWS ADMISSION TO 711 STUDENTS

Professor Abdulganiyu Ambali

The Vice-Chancellor, University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), Professor Abdulganiyu Ambali, has disclosed that the withdrawal of the provisional admission offered to 711 students was because the affected candidates presented fake Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) results for the admission screening exercise.

It was reported  recently that the university had offered admission to 2,000 candidates and afterwards withdrew the admission from the candidates.‎

Ambali, who briefed journalists on the development, said “the university decided to teach the rejected candidates who are only 711 a lesson for misguiding the institution.”

He described the concerns over the withdrawal as uncalled for, saying, “the issue of people trying to say we collected their money and refused to offer them admission is uncalled for.

“The affected students wasted our time. In any civilized society those people should be prosecuted. That is examination malpractice. If ab-initio, those people are using fraudulent means to come in you can imagine what they will do when they become our students fully.

“But we thought they are young people, we say they should learn by losing the opportunity. They can reapply. We thought they have to be taught a lesson and that is why we kept quiet. They are just trying to portray the university negatively. You know the university has come a long way.”

According to the vice-chancellor, “we have over 100,000 applicants competing for between 10,000 and 12,000 spaces you have to devise a means of telling about 90,000 to go home. We have to do that objectively.

“During the first screening before we made any move to admit anyone, we used the screening based on what we have to prune down the number of candidates. Out of the 103,000 that applied we pruned it down to 60,000. We now asked the 60,000 to upload their SSCE results. Many people did and based on what they uploaded, the committee graded their results.

“That was the basis of our first admission list amounting to about 70 per cent of our carrying capacity. Probably about 7,000 and we then told them to either accept or reject the admission offer. So many candidates accepted it. And the next stage was to come for screening along with the originals of the SSCE results they had uploaded. When they brought them we compared them with what they uploaded.
That was when we saw the difference. Some people that had C6 uploaded B1, some A1. Then we said they had misguided us because it was based on what you uploaded that we graded and offered you provisional admission. That is why we rejected some of the candidates.”

Ambali also denied that the suspension of two leaders of a faction of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) loyal to the national body by the university management did not have any link with their petition against him. The suspended ASUU leaders are the factional chairman and secretary.

“The suspension of the two academic staff purporting to be factional leaders of UNILORIN ASUU is the normal university’s regulation. If somebody is trying to cause disaffection within the university system, he has to face the music. One of the persons had two queries before his suspension. Their suspension had nothing to do with the last move they made.

“The crux of the matter is centred on insubordination by the staff concerned. Because the university has its own code of conduct for all its staff including all principal officers and the vice-chancellor.

“The suspended staff had even tried to use students to destabilise the university system, but God so kind because of the nature of the students and the staff that we have sanity has been prevailing.”