UTME: 180 Candidates Fall For JAMB’s Trap, Face Results Cancellation
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has caught 180 candidates attempting to cheat in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) through a fake website it created to target such individuals.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, who disclosed this while monitoring the mock UTME exercise at a Computer-Based Test (CBT) centre in Bwari, Abuja on Thursday, said the candidates risk having their results cancelled.
Oloyede advised candidates to steer clear of fraudulent websites and individuals claiming to offer assistance during the examination.
He emphasised that the only way to pass the UTME is by studying hard, warning candidates against patronising rogue websites.
“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 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.
“Because to attempt to cheat is already an infraction, those who paid into that account, looking for questions, we are going to deal firmly with them. And for many of the institutions, 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 added that 211,000 candidates sat for the mock exam across designated CBT centres in the country.
Oloyede added that the results of the mock examination will 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 it is so good. What we want to do is to try some things. As students are getting wiser, we are also getting better…..
“So 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 2025 UTME is scheduled to commence on April 25 at approved CBT centres across the country.
UTME: 180 Candidates Fall For JAMB’s Trap, Face Results Cancellation is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
