The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has drawn a line in the sand. For years, exam malpractice in Nigeria was about impersonators slipping into centres or teachers feeding answers under the desk. But what the board is now uncovering looks less like crude cheating and more like cybercrime.
On Monday in Abuja, JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, inaugurated a 23-member special committee to probe 6,458 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results flagged for “technology-driven” fraud. The board’s message to universities was blunt: if you admit candidates whose results don’t pass JAMB’s integrity check, those admissions may not stand.
“We came across a number of strange things this year,” Oloyede admitted. “Exam malpractice has moved from simple impersonation to advanced schemes such as image blending and attempts to breach test centre networks.”
Cheating goes digital
While 141 cases of conventional malpractice have already been referred to JAMB’s disciplinary committee, the new 23-member panel inaugurated this week is focused on extraordinary infractions. These include:
Image blending – Candidates manipulating registration photos to merge two faces, confusing facial recognition software.
Finger blending/pairing – Registering fingerprints of multiple individuals to enable surrogates to write exams on behalf of candidates.
False albinism claims – Misrepresenting as persons with albinism to gain undue concessions such as extended time.
LAN intrusions – Attempts to breach the Local Area Network of CBT centres to tamper with live exam scripts and submissions.
“These are not the normal malpractice cases Nigeria has seen before,” Oloyede said. “They represent a new frontier of criminal creativity, and if left unchecked, they could destroy the credibility of our entire admission system.”
The integrity test
So far, the 141 conventional malpractice cases that involve collusion, smuggled materials, and impersonation have been handed to JAMB’s disciplinary committee. But the heavy lifting will fall to the new panel, tasked with investigating the extraordinary cases involving syndicates and insider collusion.
Within three weeks, the committee must sift through the 6,458 flagged results and separate genuine candidates from fraudsters. Those cleared will move on to the admission cycle, while the guilty will face sanctions that could end their academic journeys before they begin.
At the heart of Oloyede’s concern is not just education, but Nigeria’s broader social fabric. “Examination malpractice is something we must fight with every pinch of blood in our veins,” he said. “If we allow this to fester, it will damage not just education but every part of our society where integrity should matter.”
Backing him, the committee chairman, Dr. Jake Epele, described the assignment as a “sacred duty” to defend merit and restore public confidence.
The stick gets bigger
The timing is no coincidence. In May, Education Minister Dr. Tunji Alausa rolled out a Federal Government directive imposing a three-year ban on students caught in exam malpractice. The penalty applies across all national examinations including, JAMB, WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB, and is enforced using the National Identification Number (NIN) system, making it harder for culprits to reappear under new identities.
Schools and CBT centres caught aiding malpractice also risk being blacklisted, a punishment that could shut them out of the examination business for years.
For Nigeria’s higher education system, it’s a stress test of whether digital exams, once seen as the silver bullet to cheating, can still hold credibility in the face of cyber-enabled fraud.
By confronting high-tech malpractice, JAMB is also confronting a deeper national question: can diligence and merit still be trusted as the legitimate routes to opportunity in Nigeria?
