An official of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has said that thousands of registered candidates across 38 centres in 11 states of the federation may be denied the opportunity to participate in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
READ : JAMB 2024 Questions and Answers / 2024/2025 JAMB Questions and Answers
This is because some of the Computer Based Test centres’ operators defaulted by disobeying the rules governing the registration of candidates as provided by JAMB.
The affected states are Akwa-Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Nassarawa, Ondo, Oyo, Rivers.
The JAMB registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, who disclosed this at the examination body’s headquarters in Abuja, also “handed over” the 38 operators to the police for further investigation.
According to the registrar, “the operators illegally moved their registration facilities outside their allocated locations”.
The registrar explained that Virtual Private Network(VPN) access is issued to each registered CBT centre “but the board gathered that some of the approved centres went ahead to grant third-party access to cyber-cafés and business centres operators against the board’s directive.”
A one-on-one engagement between the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede and the arrested CBT operators at the Board’s headquarters in Bwari, revealed that some had registered fictitious names and National Identity Numbers (NIN) with JAMB as staff of the CBT centres. By implication, the fate of all UTME/DE candidates who knowingly or ignorantly registered at the illegal registration centres is presently unknown as there are no clear indication if they would be allowed to sit for this years examinations or other arrangements are out in place to capture them.
Oloyede, who frowned at the development, said: “An average parent does not want the child to queue even for ten minutes.”
He spoke further: ”They will prefer that they will go and pay this people extra money and they will claim to have done it for them not knowing the incalculable damage that they are doing to their own children.
“Even if we have destroyed our own generation, let the incoming generation have the opportunity of building a better tomorrow for us and that’s our position. As s far as we are concerned a prima facie case of cyber crime has been established against them.
“The appropriate security agencies will take over from here and deal with the matter. They will go and give their statements to the law enforcement agencies; yours is just to arrest you can’t say they will go to prison, its beyond you, its the judge who will determine that. We would have done our own part of it but please help us appeal to candidates and their parents to go through the normal process.
“All those candidates that have been defrauded knew that they were not registering at the right place and they were going there thinking that it will work at the end of the day, it will not work and when it will not work, that time the press will be saying JAMB does not know what its doing.”
He warned all owners and operators of JAMB approved CBT centres to strictly adhere to the laid down rules and regulations in registering candidates. He added that JAMB was better equipped to monitor and track all illegality surrounding its activities in any part of the country.
“Other CBT centres should keep within the regulations. When we ask you to register candidates you register candidates according to the rules, nothing outside the law should be done.
“We have published the list of all the centres and they are available in all our state offices across the country and in our weekly bulletin including those we have blacklisted. Let people register in approved CBT centres and no candidate should give their password or code to anybody not even to your parents.”
