The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), on Wednesday, revealed that it has withheld 76, 923 results of candidates who wrote the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for various malpractices.
JAMB’s Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, said this at a briefing with reporters in Abuja revealing that some super rich parents paid as much as N200, 000 to owners of Computer Based Centres (CBT) to upgrade the results of their children.
He said the board has so far released 1, 606,901 results, adding that the agency is yet to release 80, 889 results but added that more results would be released once the board has finished clearing the candidates of any infractions.
“So far we have released the results of 1,606,901 candidates after the examinations, leaving us with a balance of 80, 889. Out of this 80,000 we have deliberately withheld 76,923 for further investigation because of alleged malpractices in the centres where the examinations where held,” he said.
“There is no need to panic if you belong to the 80,000. For us we want to thoroughly investigate what had happened.
“We do not mean that this 80,889, all of them committed any infraction, no. We did not say so. In fact those who committed the infraction may be less than 10% of these people but when something happens in a centre pending investigation to know who was involved, who was not involved, the best thing is to withhold the results of certain number.
“The results that have not been released will be released before the commencement of the admission exercise for those who are not guilty of any infraction. 76, 923 results are the ones we are investigating the centres.
“Parents of these super VIP paid N200, 000 for each of the candidates to be able to score high marks. We are able to be ahead of them. Next year we are going to put electronic jammers in all the CBT centres. They better start to think of another way because we know that is what they do and we will also plan ahead of them.”
“As at today, 640 candidates out of the 1.7 million across the country could not do biometric verification. We have investigated why and have found various reasons including the fact that some centres or fraudsters registered candidates taking the image of their thumbs rather than the actual thumbs.
“In fairness, what we think that we should do is to assume that the students were not guilty. We have decided that the whole 640 students will be made to write their examination as we promised them and they will also be part of those who will write their examination.
“Those people will however write the examination under my very own eyes because if you are well, you cannot be verified and you registered, we will still give them the opportunity.
“Those who made mistake you will go and do the correction in JAMB CBT centres free of charge. We are not closing correction. Correction will continue. If you don’t have time now go next week or next month.
“At JAMB offices, they have been told to do the correction free once you have paid through TSA. Even the printing for you should be free.”