The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has launched an investigation into the credentials of applicants dating back to 2009. This means that every single candidate who took UTME within the last 10 years will be scrutinized. Persons who cheated the system successfully, and went on to secure admission and may have even graduated will face prosecution and their certificates will be withdrawn.
This was disclosed by JAMB’s Head of Media and Information, Fabian Benjamin, during an interview with Punch on Monday. He said the probe had begun and it would be completed in a short time as JAMB had acquired software to identify fake biometric data.
Benjamin said, “If you graduated from university and you did not take UTME, it means the foundation is faulty and the building cannot stand. We have already started the probe but we will go deeper after the exams.”
“It will not take too long. We are using software, so it will just check the biometric data of candidates and if the biometric data of someone shows about six different names, then it will notify us. So, if one person’s photo brings up different names and we have spotted this, we will find out where the person is and then we will pick them up.”
Speaking in a separate interview on 95.1 Nigeria Info FM Abuja, the JAMB spokesman said,
“We want to do what we call biometric verification dating 10 years back. Even if you are now working and we discovered that someone wrote exams for you, we will publish your name and the law agencies will do the needful. We have the biometric data from 10 years ago. We will compare the photos with thumbprints and names. We discovered that a candidate could have taken exams with 30 different names.”
The JAMB spokesman said it had become important to expose exam cheats to serve as a deterrent to others. He said the photos of those found culpable would be published for all to see even if they were now working class persons.
