Father arrested for impersonating son during UTME

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says the father of one of its candidate has been arrested for impersonating his son during the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

While speaking to journalists shortly after the inspection at Kaduna State University (KASU) CBT Centre, the JAMB Registrar said

“For those who engage in cheating, they should know that it does not pay. The technology is helping to check that. Across the country, most of the problem we have is impersonation. For instance, now, we say we have NIN, we now have cases of people with two NINs and therefore, that has defeated the purpose of identity verification. We are going to take that up with NIMC, that there are people who have two NINs.

We have a case of a father impersonating his son, writing an examination for the son and I wonder, are you not destroying your son’s future? Of course, two of them are now in custody. I can’t understand what the father will now tell his son when they are both locked up in the same cell. This happened not in Kaduna, but I don’t want to disclose the state.

So, it is largely cases of impersonation, but we are ahead of them; we are just picking them up like chicken now because the facilities are there for us to see what they are doing and to pick them up. And even those that we have left for research purposes, they will see what will happen after the exams” he said

The JAMB Registrar also used the opportunity to inform those who have missed the exam, for reasons not caused by the Examination body, to forget about it, saying that, JAMB cannot spend tens of millions of the nation’s resources to reorganize a session for few candidates who missed the exams due to their personal recklessness.

He warned that UTME is not a school-based examination, as such, JAMB would not be responsible for any failure caused to candidates who registered through their secondary schools who either deliberately or due to logistics challenges could not get the candidates to meet their requirements.

“Most of those candidates who missed the UTME are students from hostels who were made to register through schools because of the money the schools want to collect from the parents in the name of JAMB, which would now put 30 students in one bus. They will now be dropping them in different locations. By the time they get to the last student’s centre, he is already late for the exam. You will now see the principal writing to me. What business do I have with a school?

Even a religious body wrote to me that, oh, the following 100 candidates, I want them to write their exams on a particular day of the examination. They were even deciding for me the school to post the candidates. How is that possible? I will ask the candidates, why did you submit your registration number to a third party that is writing to me, when the person is not a candidate. And you know as a candidate that you have a right to write to JAMB directly. But, they allow the third party who will lie on their behalf to contact JAMB,” he said.