Maryam Abeeb, Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it recorded only 40 cases of malpractices in the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as against over 4,000 recorded in previous year.
Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ish-aq Oloyede, made this known during an oversight visit to the Board by the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education in Abuja.
He said some security personnel have been nabbed for abetting malpractices in the exam.
Oloyede who presented the 2020 budget performance of the Board to the Committee, said the introduction of National Identification Number (NIN) in UTME registration successfully flushed out ‘fake people ‘ from the exam process as well as curtailed malpractices.
“This year examination malpractice dropped radically from over 4000, 5000 to about 40 and 50%.
“What we have this year is security agents trying to change candidates after they have been verified. After biometric verification their parents would have paid security agents to smuggle him out and smuggle in new person whose finger was not verified, of course the cctv cameras will pick them and that is why we are now arresting the security men, two or three have confessed that I paid N2,000, my mother paid N3,000 to smuggle in a person other than the person (registered for the exam) because they could not go through biometrics,” Oloyede said.
The JAMB boss said the Board would not hesitate to withdraw results of candidates involved in malpractice after thorough viewing of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras deployed for the exam.
On the alleged poor performance by candidates in this year’s exam , Oloyede said UTME is not a certification exam, hence, there cannot be an issue of mass failure.
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