Father arrested for ‘writing’ UTME for son

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says cases of people having double national identification numbers (NIN) made impersonation possible in the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The statement from the exam body came after a father and his son were arrested for alleged impersonation in the ongoing UTME.

The father, whose name has not been disclosed, was said to have impersonated his son to help the latter pass the university entrance examination.

Ishaq Oloyede, registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), confirmed the development in an interview on Wednesday.

Oloyede inspected the Kaduna State University (KASU) Computer Based Test (CBT) centre after which he spoke to the press.

He said it is unfortunate that some parents have descended so low in morals to the extent of resorting to such shameful acts.

“Two of them are now in custody. I can’t understand what the father will tell his son when they are locked in the same cell,” Oloyede said.

Oloyede said the 2024 examination recorded huge success, except for a few cases of impersonation.

He said impersonation became possible because some people now have multiple NINs.

“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,” he said.

“For instance now, we say we have NIN. We now have cases of people with two NINs. That has defeated the purpose of identity verification. We will take that up with NIMC; that there are people who have two NIN.”

Oloyede said a total of 1.94 million candidates sat for the 2024 UTME.

He added that those who have missed the exam for reasons not caused by JAMB should forget about it.

The registrar said the board cannot spend millions to reorganise a session for candidates who missed it due to their recklessness.

“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, They would now put 30 students in one bus,” he said.

“They will now be dropping them in different locations. By 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 ‘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?”