Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board says it will expend the sum of N100million to prosecute 200 persons caught cheating during the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination across the country.
The Board said 400 candidates seeking admissions into institutions in 2020 admission year were caught in admission fraud, alleging that some tertiary institutions and Computer Based Test centres were collaborators in the irregularities.
JAMB said on Tuesday that the examination scam syndicates in the Computer-Based Test centres, which used to be in the Southern part of Nigeria, have now migrated to the Northern part of Nigeria.
JAMB Registrar/Chief Executive, Prof Ish-aq Oloyede, who disclosed these at a press conference in Abuja, said the Board tracked over 400 candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in the country for admission fraud,.
The Board, at the press conference, also paraded one Buhari Abubakar, who was reportedly caught in an attempt to impersonate one Muhammad Sanusi, his alleged accomplice, in examination malpractice.
Operatives of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps were said to have arrested both suspects, who are from Kano State.
Oloyede, however, disclosed that JAMB would spend about N100m on the prosecution of 200 of the over 400 persons involved in impersonation in the 2020 UTME.
The JAMB registrar, who accused some tertiary institutions of complicity in the widespread irregularities, said the first 64 cases of CBT infractions treated by JAMB were from the North, with some having multiple cases of up to 96 irregularities.
According to him, “In Nigeria, people don’t copy good things but the bad things. The cases of exam malpractices which used to be in the South has now crept to the North and the first 20 of such cases we tracked came mostly from the North, especially Kano.
“This year, we had over 400 people that were caught whereby those who wrote the exams were different from those who applied. About 200 of the candidates would be prosecuted, five from each state of the federation, as JAMB does not have the resources to prosecute all the 400 candidates. Prosecuting a candidate would cost the board over N500,000.”
Oloyede explained that Abubakar, a candidate of the 2020 UTME, paid Sanusi N25,000 to source for an examination taker to sit the exam for him, on the basis of which he secured admission into Bayero University, Kano, to read Islamic Studies.
“The arrangement ran into hitches when all the candidate’s details, including his identity card, carried the passport of the hired examination-impersonator,” the JAMB boss said.