UTME JAMB Cancels Registrations of 817 Candidates

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has cancelled 817 students’ registration for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Prof Is-haq Oloyede, JAMB Registrar, revealed this after separate meetings with stakeholders, saying the registration was revoked due to discovered violations involving the use of strange biometric fingerprints in the process of registration.

Oloyede revealed that some registration officers in the affected 178 Computer Based Test (CBT) centres added one of their fingerprint to complete the registration process for the candidates. He did, however, say that the 817 students would be given another chance to re-register for the exam, with the cost borne by the testing centres.

He said: “Our technology detected that some registration officers in some Computer Based Test (CBT) centres added one or two of their fingerprints to finish the registration procedure for some candidates,” he explained. These candidates would be offered the opportunity to re-register for the exam, with the CBT centres covering the fee.

“We discovered that some of the candidates who permitted others to add their fingers to their registration procedure were simply ignorant because you will hear them claim my finger was hot, and the man put his own.

“Some of them did it purposefully for impersonation, but we can’t separate those who are real from those who are not genuine, so we chose to cancel all of them, and we ask them to do new registration.

“We spoke with the CBT centres involved, and they all admitted to committing the offence. Even students who were telling lies are aware that we have technology that will not allow any lie to be accommodated.

“However, the owners of the CBT centres proposed a solution. We cancelled those people’s registrations and will give them a notice to return to the same CBT centres where they were registered, and the CBT centres will pay JAMB the cost of the candidates’ registration.”

The JAMB chief, on the other hand, emphasised the risks of permitting a registration officer or any other person to add his or her finger during the capture of a candidate’s biometric data. Aside from the possibility of impersonation in the examination, it will also grant such ‘strange’ individuals access to change important facts about candidates, including the examination centre.