Deborah Akinyosoye
Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has directed the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB; West African Examinations Council, WAEC; National Examinations Council, NECO as well as National Business and Technical Examinations Board, NABTEB, to blacklist Computer-Based Test, CBT, centres and candidates found guilty of examination malpractices.
His directive, said to be a response to the mind-boggling sharp practices that trailed the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, was contained in a letter, dated May 27, 2025, to JAMB and other examination bodies.
Alausa particularly said any school or CBT centre involved in examination malpractice or acting as a miracle centre be derecognised for a number of years that would be determined by the examination body.
He said: “If any school/CBT centre is derecognised by any examination body, other sister examination bodies should follow suit and derecognise the same school/CBT centre for the same number of years to run concurrently. This will send a very strong signal to operators of these miracle centres.
“The student(s) involved in examination malpractice should be barred from sitting for any external examinations in Nigeria, such as those conducted by WAEC, NECO, NABTEB, etc, for three years, using the instrumentality of NIN. Such a stringent measure will serve as a deterrent to other students and parents.”
He explained that his action was backed by an extant law, especially Section 16(2) of the Examination Malpractices Act.
The Act, he noted, states: “An examination body may, in the exercise of its powers under this section, circulate the name of an offending candidate, supervisor, invigilator, official, school or examination centre to other examination bodies, which may impose similar punishment.”
Recall that JAMB had, while releasing the 2025 UTME resit results, claimed to have recorded what it referred to as “advanced malpractices.“
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, had said “while some Nigerians are busy dissipating energies on conspiracy theories and the spread of hatred, the future of Nigeria is being put in jeopardy by an advanced level digitised fraud.”
Speaking further, Oloyede had said that “further high-level malpractices were uncovered, which led to the withdrawal of some results and the arrest of several culprits across the country, some of whom have made useful confessions.
“These unwholesome practices include collusion of certain CBT centre/school proprietors, with the connivance of accredited centres, to hack the networks of targeted CBT centres, thereby gaining control of candidates’ computers and remotely submitting their responses to the relevant local server of the centre as recently discovered by security agencies to whom we are profoundly grateful.
“AI-enabled photo blending of candidates with impersonators, many of whom are current undergraduate students; registration with combined fingerprints, which involves the combination of fingerprints from multiple persons for a single candidate’s registration.
“There were also cases of extension of Local Area Networks, LAN, from centres to remote ‘strong rooms’; pairing of candidates with professional mercenaries after wilfull disruption of sitting arrangements who had registered for the UTME for the purpose of access to the examination hall.
‘’Unfortunately, many undergraduates of tertiary institutions are found to be involved in this nefarious practice.”
“While releasing the results, it should be emphasised that recent discoveries, particularly by security agencies, have necessitated the withdrawal of some of the results of implicated candidates across the country, whose results have been previously released,
“Over three thousand candidates nationwide have been identified as either accomplices or beneficiaries of this extraordinary examination fraud.
“But as investigation progresses, all candidates implicated in these unwholesome activities will have their results withdrawn as soon as incontrovertible proofs are established, even if the results have been released.”