The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has vowed to punish about 180 candidates found to have committed infractions while attempting to compromise the integrity of the Board’s examination.
Registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, on Thursday, revealed how the 180 candidates fell easily into the trap set by the Board to entangle examination cheaters who patronise the rogue websites.
He said that from the trick, it was discovered that some candidates pay as much as N30,000 to the operators of the fake websites with false hope of getting assistance from them.
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Oloyede made the revelation while monitoring the conduct of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) mock examination, which took place in designated Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres across the country on Thursday.
A total of 211,000 candidates out of the 2 million that registered for the 2025 UTME and who indicated interest in sitting the optional mock examination sat for the exercise in some CBT centres nationwide.
While monitoring the exercise at a CBT centre in Bwari, Abuja, Oloyede announced that the results of the mock examination would be released on Friday.
“They will have the results tomorrow. The results will be ready. Those who finished, we are working now on their results, but we want to compare with the second batch, the third batch, and so on. And see that everything is working well. But later by tomorrow, they will have the results,” he said.
Explaining the purpose of the UTME Mock, Oloyede said the exercise was aimed at testing the board’s readiness for the main examination and experimenting with new strategies to improve the process.
“The word is mock, and we want to say so far, so good. What we want to do is to try some things. As students are getting wiser, we prepare ourselves ahead of them, especially those who want to cheat. We are doing certain things to ensure that cheating is eliminated. We are trying to make sure that when we go for the exam, we will have taken experience and taken some lessons from our experience at the Mock level. So, so far, so good,” he said.
The Registrar, who maintained that the only way to pass UTME is by studying hard, expressed concerns that some candidates are patronising rogue websites in order to cheat in the exam, adding that JAMB has also opened a decoy website targeting such individuals.
“We need to let the students know that the best way to pass the examination, UTME in particular, is to study. We are aware of some rogue websites asking people to come and pay so that they can help.
“It cannot work. We have also opened our own rogue website. And as of this morning, about 180 students have paid.
“So those students, because of an attempt to cheat, is already an infraction. So those who paid into that account, looking for questions, we are going to deal firmly with them. And many of the institutions, the UTME is not a school-based examination.
“We register students individually. And that is why we tell the students, do not give (out) your registration number. Do not register by proxy.
“Do not give your registration number to anybody. Because some of these schools want to be able to brag that, oh, my 10 students from my school scored 280. There was a state where even the governor of a state was misinformed, and they were celebrating nothing. So this type of thing that people want to cut corners, we are abreast of all this. And we are doing everything possible (to stop it).
“We have about 180 of them. And we are going to deal with them firmly. We are going to cancel their results, both UTME and DE,” Oloyede said.
He advised candidates to steer clear of fraudulent websites and individuals claiming to offer assistance during the examination.
“Some of them are paying N30,000 for something that will never work. And to some, when I look at those who have paid to us this money, I smile,” he added.
Recall that the 2025 UTME is scheduled to commence on April 25 at approved CBT centres across the country.
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