No fewer than 100 examination cheats have so far been arrested by security operatives across the country during the just-concluded Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said.
Among the persons arrested was a notorious cheat who had registered about 64 times in a bid to “ghost-write” for 64 candidates.
In its Weekly Bulletin released in Abuja on Monday by its spokesperson, Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB said the fraudsters were engaged in multiple registration to facilitate impersonation during the examination.
The board noted that the act was inflating annual registration of the UTME exercise by up to 30 per cent.
JAMB also said that data available to it showed that the unwholesome practice was prevalent in virtually all the states of the federation, including Abuja.
The examination body said the arrest of the culprits was made possible by the comprehensive and mandatory identity checks conducted on those taking the examination with a view to fishing out professional ghost writers before the release of the results. JAMB also said that it had cancelled the results of two Computer Based (CBT) centres in Abia over what it described as “widespread irregularities” during the UTME. The board gave the names of the CBT centres as Heritage and Infinity CBT centre and Okwyzil Computer Institute Comprehensive School Ugwunabo, Aba, Abia.
It said the drastic action was necessitated by the visual evidence obtained from a careful review of the CCTV recordings by a panel of experts engaged by the board.
“However, in order not to unduly punish honest and hardworking candidates who found themselves attached to these two centres, the board magnanimously relocated all the candidates who had taken or were scheduled to take their examination in the two centres to other centres where they had subsequently taken their examinations,” it said.
JAMB, however, apologised to innocent candidates involved in the relocation for the inconveniences they may have suffered, reaffirming its commitment to providing equal opportunity to all candidates to articulate their hopes and aspirations.
The body said that all the results of the examination sessions conducted by the board in the two centres from April 11 to 18 were null and void.