By Chinyere Nwachukwu/Lagos
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it arrested a female third year medical student and another undergraduate for attempting to write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for other candidates.
The board’s Head, Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos.
NAN reports that the 2019 UTME commenced on April 11 in 678 centres across Nigeria.
According to Benjamin, in spite of the measures put in place to stamp out impersonation and other forms of examination malpractices, desperate individuals attempted to commit the offence.
“It has come to our notice that a lady, was caught at the Rainbow Digital Tech centre, one of the centres used for the examination in Kano, trying to impersonate by way of trying to sit for the examination for a candidate.
“On interrogation, it was discovered that the said lady is a medical student at the Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto.
“Another case of impersonation was also reported in Benin.
According to him, the second suspect is an undergraduate of the University of Benin.
“We will like to state in clear terms that the board has zero tolerance for such an offence and other related crimes, aimed at undermining the integrity of its examination and its processes.
“We have been briefed about these development; at the appropriate time, they will face the full wrath of the law,” he said.
According to Benjamin, so far, the board has recorded about 98 per cent success in the conduct of the examination
He told NAN that few cases of technical hitches in some of centres being have been recorded.
“I must say that we have recorded a huge success so far in the conduct of the examination.
“Having said that, I will also like to mention that some centres have, however, fallen short of the standards of the board in terms of facilities and other logistics.
“The board is doing everything possible to ensure that candidates in such centres are not short-changed by any means.
“They should not panic as they will be relocated to new centres by the board in due course.
“The board will relocate them to new centres for the examination, with new dates.
“The affected candidates should check their profiles from time to time for the new centres and dates for their examination.
“The board is not happy with this development as it has been discovered that most of such centres are mainly those situated in secondary schools, with their owners claiming to have perfect facilities on ground before the commencement of the examination.
“Others involved themselves in one infraction or the other.
“We are not going to take these issues lightly with defaulting centres and their owners. At the appropriate time, they will be sanctioned,” Benjamin said.
He said that candidates who thought their centres were shut out from the ongoing examination should not fret, as it meant they had been relocated.
“With the complaints we got from such centres without capacity to meet the board’s examination standards, we quickly swung into action to relocate the candidates, as we do not want them to feel cheated or get confused.
“So these candidates might arrive at such centres to discover that nothing is happening there.
“They should not panic, they should just know that they have been relocated from such centres to a new one.
“All they have to do is to continue to check their profiles for information on their new centres and dates for the examination,” he said.
He said that JAMB would continue to deploy resources within to ensure that no candidate would be left behind.
