The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), on Tuesday, alerted Nigerians to the merchants of malpractices in the centres of its 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in some Northern parts of the country.
According to the organisation, examination scam syndicates in the Computer-Based Test centres, which used to be in the Southern part of Nigeria, has now crept into the North.
Registrar/Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Ish-aq Oloyede, who stated these during a press conference, in Abuja, said over 400 candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria had been tracked for admission fraud.
JAMB also paraded one Buhari Abubakar, who was reportedly caught in an attempt to impersonate one Muhammad Sanusi, his alleged accomplice, in examination malpractice.
Both suspects, from Kano State, were arrested by men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
Prof. Oloyede said JAMB would expend about N100 million on the prosecution of 200 of the over 400 persons involved in impersonation in the 2020 UTME.
While alleging that some tertiary institutions were accomplices in the widespread irregularities, he 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.
He said, “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.
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“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.
Abubakar, a candidate of the 2020 UTME, Prof. Oloyede said, 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 (BUK), to read Islamic Studies.
He continued, “The arrangement ran into hitches when all the candidate’s details, including his identity card, carried the passport of the hired examination-impersonator.”
