John Shiklam in Kaduna
A father and his son have been arrested by the police for impersonation during the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The Registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this in an interview with journalists yesterday after inspecting the Kaduna State University University (KASU) Computer Based Test (CBT) Centre.
Oloyede said that the father whose name he did not disclosed, impersonated the son during the exam.
He said that it is very unfortunate that some parents have descended so low in morals to the extent of resorting to such shameful act.
“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 cannot understand what the father will now tell his son when they are both locked up in the same cell.
“This definitely did not happen in Kaduna, but I don’t want to disclose the state,” the JAMB registrar said.
Oloyede said that the 2024 examination has recorded huge success, except for few cases of impersonation, which according to him, became possible because some people now have multiple National Identity Number (NIN).
“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,” he said.
Oloyede explained that those that have missed the exam, for reasons not caused by JAMB, should forget about it as the board could not spend millions of Naira to reorganise a session for few candidates that missed it due to their personal recklessness.
He warned that, UTME is not a school based examination, as such, JAMB would not be responsible for any failure caused to candidates who registered through their secondary schools who either deliberately or due to logistics challenges, could not get the candidates to meet their requirements.
The JAMB’s registrar said: “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, would now put 30 students in one bus.
“They will now be dropping them in different locations. By the time they get to the last student’s centre, he is already late for the exam. You will now see 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?”
Speaking on the need for mega CBT Centre in Lagos, Oloyede, who disclosed that 1.94 million candidates sat for the 2024 UTME, said that the board needs support in highly populated states like Lagos, to build mega CBT centres like that of Kaduna, which accommodates 4,000 candidates per day.
“If we can have two or three of such CBT Centres across the country, most of our challenges would be over. And we have the resources to build it.
“We only require the state governments to provide the land. We require this type of centre in Lagos too, but we have put enough pressure on the authorities in Lagos, but they have not given us the desired response.
“You can see the relief this centre has brought to us.
“Kaduna State Government provided us the land and we expended from the public fund more than N1.4 billion to build those four centres and you can see, they are sitting 1,100 candidates at a time, which means, in two days, you would have done exam for 8,000 candidates.
“But I believe the authorities in Lagos will respond to our call and provide a suitable land. We will build it,” he said.
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