The registration of over 817 candidates for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations and Direct Entry examinations has been cancelled by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board over alleged impersonation.
The decision was made after JAMB authorities uncovered the strange use of biometrics during the registration process.Registrar of the examination body, Professor Ishaq Oloyede said some registration officers in the affected 178 Computer-Based Test centres added their fingerprints to complete the registration process for the candidates.
The 817 affected students will be given another opportunity to re-register for the exam with the centres bearing the cost. Ishaq said;
“For the students who allowed other people to add their fingers to their registration procedure, we found that some of them were only naive, because you will hear them saying my finger was hot, and the man added his own. And you allowed him to add his own?
“Some of them did it deliberately for impersonation, but we can’t identify those who are genuine from those who are not genuine. We will cancel all of them, all the registrations, and we will ask them to re-register.
“The centres involved, we have just met with them, and they all confessed, nobody is disputing it, even students that were telling lies, they know we have the technology that won’t allow any lie to be accommodated.
“On their own (the CBT centres owners), they suggested the solution. We will cancel the registrations of those people concerned and we will send a message to them to go back to the very centres where they were registered and the CBT centres will pay to the board the cost of registration of the candidates.
“By adding his or her finger to your registration, it means he or her can change all your particulars when you are not there. You know your finger is what is used to identify you. The person can change your examination centre like say from Lagos to Ibadan, and on the exam day you won’t be able to write the exam.
“That is why we put in place a device that will throw up any strange finger that is not yours and that is why we were able to identify them.”
