The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has decried the absence over 80 per cent of the 98,232 candidates slated for Saturday’s nationwide mop-up Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, who monitored the exercise at the Technology CBT Centre, NAF Valley Estate, Abuja, described the turnout as “alarmingly low,” with only about 12 per cent of eligible candidates appearing nationwide.
Oloyede explained that mop-up exams are traditionally reserved for a few thousand candidates who missed the main UTME due to verified reasons such as illness or technical disruptions.
However, this year’s unusually large number was accommodated following widespread reports of absenteeism, and the Board’s decision to give every affected candidate a second chance—while leveraging intelligence from security agencies to fish out fraudsters.
“Every year, we do mop-up exams for about 4,000 to 5,000 students with genuine excuses. But this year, we expanded the net to accommodate nearly 100,000. Still, we were aware of syndicates trying to manipulate the system,” Oloyede said.
According to the JAMB boss, security operatives, including the Department of State Services, DSS, and the police, have been working with the Board to expose elaborate impersonation rings, many of which are allegedly coordinated by some private school proprietors and tutorial centres posing as exam preparatory platforms.
Oloyede revealed that some candidates tried to game the system by falsely claiming to be albinos, exploiting potential weaknesses in the Board’s facial recognition software.
“We’ve never had more than 100 albino candidates in any year. But this year, 1,787 candidates declared themselves albino, 450 of them from one centre alone,” he disclosed.
He said the motive was to bypass biometric scrutiny using AI-powered photo blending techniques.
Some impersonators allegedly manipulated ID images to resemble both the real and proxy candidates, triggering red flags in JAMB’s biometric verification system.
A recent arrest in Benin City uncovered one such impersonator, a dark-skinned man falsely claiming to be albino.
“That’s how far some of these criminals are willing to go,” Oloyede said.
He said JAMB has begun compiling data of candidates who registered but failed to show up for the mop-up exam, especially those who had earlier claimed to be unjustly excluded from the main UTME.
“They registered with their names, NINs, phone numbers. The security agencies are capable of picking them—and many have already been apprehended,” the Registrar noted.
Oloyede also warned parents financing these fraud schemes that they may soon face investigation and prosecution.
While mop-up results were expected to be ready by Saturday, Oloyede said the Board might delay their release until Monday to allow for more rigorous scrutiny and removal of fraudulent entries.
“We want to ensure the system is not manipulated. So, results may not be released immediately,” he stated.
On a separate note, Oloyede revealed that 14 candidates seeking Direct Entry, DE, admission this year had already been caught presenting forged certificates.
Some had allegedly acquired fake NCE qualifications, with one applicant claiming to have started NCE in 2020 despite finishing secondary school in 2021.
He cited abuse of a past waiver granted by the former Minister of Education to regularize illegally admitted students between 2017 and 2020.
Some institutions, Oloyede said, are now fabricating certificates retroactively to allow ineligible students to bypass entry requirements.
“You cannot become an engineer without a credit in Mathematics. After graduating, you can’t retroactively fix entry-level requirements. It doesn’t work like that,” he stated.
He vowed that both the students and the institutions involved in such fraudulent practices “will have to pay” for their actions.
