Jamb to prosecute 200 UTME candidates for exam malpractice

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it will prosecute 200 out of the 400 exam impersonators caught during the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

“This year, we had over 400 people that were caught whereby those who wrote the exams were different from those who applied,” JAMB registrar Ish-aq Oloyede said at a press conference in Abuja.

“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 further stated that examination fraud syndicates in the Computer-Based Test centres, which used to be in the Southern part of Nigeria, has now crept into the North.

The board spokesman during the press conference paraded one Buhari Abubakar, who was 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).

Oloyede said JAMB will expend about N100m on the prosecution of 200 of the over 400 persons involved in impersonation in the 2020 UTME.

He also alleged 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.

“In Nigeria, people don’t copy good things but the bad things,” Olojede said.

“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.“