A father has been arrested for impersonating his son and writing the ongoing Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination for him.
D’Gallery gathered that both culprits (the father and son) are currently in police custody.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this while on an inspection tour of the UTME centres in Kaduna on Wednesday.
Prof. Oloyede who expressed satisfaction with the exercise, said that the 2024 examinations were largely well conducted across the nation, except for a few cases of malpractices and impersonation which became possible because some people now possess multiple National Identity Numbers (NINs).
While speaking to newsmen after the inspection at the Kaduna State University University (KASU) CBT Centre, he said: “For those who engage in cheating, they should know that it does not pay. The technology is helping us to check that.”
He warned that those who cheat in the exams would be apprehended immediately or after the examinations because JAMB had improved its technology check on culprits that engage in all forms of examination malpractices.
“Across the country, most of the problem we have is impersonation. For instance, now, we say we have NIN, we now have cases of people with two NINs and therefore, that has defeated the purpose of identity verification. We are going to take that up with NIMC, that there are people who have two NIN,” Oloyede said.
“We have a case of a father impersonating his son, writing an examination for the son and I wonder, are you not destroying your son’s future? Of course, two of them are now in custody. I can’t understand what the father will now tell his son when they are both locked up in the same cell. This happened definitely not in Kaduna, but I don’t want to disclose the state,” he added.
Oloyede also informed that those who missed the exams for factors unconnected to JAMB have lost the opportunity because the exam body won’t spend millions of naira of the nation’s resources to reorganise another session for a few candidates who missed the exams due to their personal recklessness.
He stressed that UTME was not a school-based examination. Therefore, JAMB would not be responsible for any disappointment caused by candidates who registered through their secondary schools, but could not help the candidates to meet their requirements either deliberately or due to logistics challenges.
“Most of those candidates who missed the UTME are students from hostels who were made to register through schools because of the money the schools want to collect from the parents in the name of JAMB and would put 30 students in one bus. They will now be dropping them in different locations. By the time they get to the last student’s centre, he is already late for the exam. You will now see the principal writing to me. What business do I have with a school?
“Even a religious body wrote to me that, ‘oh, the following 100 candidates, I want them to write their exams on a particular day of the examination’. They were even deciding for me the school to post the candidates. How is that possible? I will ask the candidates, why did you submit your registration number to a third party that is writing to me, when the person is not a candidate. And you know as a candidate, that you have a right to write to JAMB directly. But they allow third party who will lie on their behalf to contact JAMB,” he said.
