The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Is-haq Oloyede, has vowed to ensure the prosecution of more than 40 candidates who have been apprehended for impersonation in the ongoing 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
He also declared that there would be no rescheduling for candidates who missed the examination for whatever reason.
Speaking on Monday during monitoring of the examination in some Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres in Abuja, Oloyede described this year’s UTME as one of the best examinations so far conducted by JAMB.
He revealed that more than 1,600,000 out of 2,031,000 candidates who registered for the 2025 UTME have successfully taken the examination.
According to him, the Board would likely round off the conduct of the examination on Tuesday, with about 500,000 candidates remaining.
The Registrar noted that the Board was not in a hurry to release the results, saying adequate time was needed to thoroughly scrutinise the results for any possible trace of examination malpractices.
“We have arrested over 40 people for impersonation. Some of them very funny. Some even went to our examination hall with camera to snap the screen and be sending it out. They don’t know that our own exam is not that type of exam.
“At least 40 persons are in custody and we will see that they are prosecuted by the police,” he stated.
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On rescheduling of candidates who missed the examination, Oloyede said: “No, we don’t reschedule anybody. If you are going to UK and you miss the flight, will you tell the plane to come back?”
The JAMB boss further clarified that JAMB did not impose examination towns on the candidates, insisting that candidates made their choice of examination town during registration for the UTME.
He said: “This is one of our best examinations so far, for which we are grateful to God. But you can also see that some people are making a case out of no case.
“We have always started our exam at 8 o’clock. The first session is 8 o’clock, the second session 10.30, the third session 1 p.m., and the fourth session at 3.30 p.m.
“But every reasonable person will know that these children are young and you need to let them know that they don’t get there at 8 a.m. They have some preliminary things to do. We must check the 250 of them that we are examining. We must check their papers.
“So, we expect them to do that for about 45 minutes. If we now ask these children to arrive at the centre by 6:30 a.m., I don’t know if anybody can say that, oh, my own child arrived at 7.30 and they sent him back. But should we tell them to arrive by 7.30? How many of them will miss the exam?
“We have this mob mentality. When you have people who have no job, they will throw something to people and people will be discussing without even finding out. We start our exam just like any workday at 8 a.m. Even in their school, they start school at 8 o’clock, so what is bad in fixing our exam for 8 o’clock and asking the children to arrive at 6:30 a.m., so that we can screen 250 of them?
“I have heard one uninformed person saying that we send people to centres other than what they have chosen. We have thrown the challenge, bring one of such person, just one person and we will give you a lot of money.
“You can never find that because it will be unreasonable to post a person to where he or she has not chosen. They must have indicated where they wanted, but some of these children deceive their parents.
“We have had a case of somebody choosing Sokoto and telling the father that he chose Lagos. When you ask, the boy will say I want to go to Sokoto because I want to know Sokoto. I’m from Sokoto or something of that nature. You cannot entrust your ATM card to your child, but when the child now tells you some fabrications, you believe.
“There was a case that a very big man confronted us yesterday that somebody applied to Katsina and we posted him to Funtua instead of Katsina town. We said bring the evidence, where is the evidence?
“When he brought the evidence I was taken aback. The person was posted to Dr. Funtua CBT Centre in Katsina. But once he saw Funtua, he went to Funtua and when he got to Funtua he was asked where are you going, he said Dr Funtua CBT Centre, in Katsina and the thing is boldly written in the printout, Dr. Funtua CBT Centre, Katsina,” Oloyede stated.
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