Candidates who registered with the “38” fraudulent CBT centers are likely not to sit for this year UTME or otherwise – JAMB Registrar 

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, yesterday, handed over 38 operators of various Computer Based Test, CBT, centres to operatives of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, for prosecution over cybercrimes.

The suspects, who were said to have allegedly indulged in the cyber crimes, using the Virtual Private Network, VPN, are from the six geopolitical zones of the country.

VPN extends a private network across a public network, and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing services were directly connected to the private network.

JAMB’s Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, speaking at the board’s headquarters, Abuja, where the suspects were handed over to operatives of NSCDC for onward prosecution, explained that the suspects who are operators of CBT centres, extended the VPN to illegal outposts to register some candidates for the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, and those seeking admission through Direct Entry, DE.

A one-on-one engagement between the JAMB Registrar, Prof Oloyede and the arrested CBT operators at the board’s headquarters in Bwari, showed that some had registered fictitious names and National Identity Numbers, NIN, with JAMB as staff of the CBT centres.

By implication, the fate of all UTME/DE candidates, who knowingly or ignorantly registered at the illegal registration centres is presently unknown as there are no clear indication if they would be allowed to sit for this year’s examinations or other arrangements are out in place to capture them.

Oloyede, who frowned at the development, said: “An average parent does not want the child to queue even for 10 minutes

They will prefer paying these people extra money and they will claim to have done it for them not knowing the incalculable damage that they are doing to their own children.

“Even if we have destroyed our own generation, let the incoming generation have the opportunity of building a better tomorrow for us and that’s our position. As s far as we are concerned, a prima facie case of cybercrime has been established against them.

“The appropriate security agencies will take over from here and deal with the matter. They will go and give their statements to the law enforcement agencies.”

Yours is just to arrest, you can’t say they will go to prison, it’s beyond you, it’s the judge who will determine that. We would have done our part of it but please help us appeal to candidates and their parents to go through the normal process.

“All those candidates that have been defrauded knew that they were not registering at the right place and they were going there thinking that it will work at the end of the day, it will not work and when it will not work, that time the press will be saying JAMB does not know what it’s doing