A father writing exam for his son at the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, has been arrested, according to the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, or JAMB.
The board warned that it has improved its technology check for those engaging in all forms of examination malpractices.
Speaking in Kaduna on Wednesday, the JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede who inspected the UTME centres in Kaduna, expressed satisfaction over the 2024 examination, which had 1.94 million students this year.
He, however, frowned at few cases of impersonation, adding that some people now have multiple National Identity Number, NIN, which the examination body would take up with the Identification Management body.
“For those who engage in cheating, they should know that it does not pay. The technology is helping us 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 NIN 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 NIN.
“We have a case of a father impersonating his son, writing 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 definitely not in Kaduna, but I don’t want to disclose the state,” he said.
He said JAMB needs support of highly populated states like Lagos, to build mega CBT centres like that of Kaduna, which accommodates 4,000 candidates per day.
He expressed hope that the authorities in Lagos would provide a suitable land for JAMB to build the Mega CBT centre in the city.