The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has sounded a fresh alarm over the rising wave of sophisticated digital examination fraud in Nigeria, calling for radical and urgent interventions to curb the trend before it causes long-term damage to the country’s education system.
Okay.ng reports that Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, JAMB Registrar, made this call during a recent event in Abuja, as reported in the JAMB Bulletin published Monday.
Oloyede described the evolving tactics employed by fraudsters during the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as “worrisome, highly sophisticated, and capable of jeopardising national development.”
“Malpractice is not only compromising learning and research, it is endangering our collective future,” Oloyede warned. “There is an urgent need for decisive action on these new and disturbing developments. The public must not treat this menace with levity.”
He lamented that instead of addressing the growing problem, “some people are dissipating their energies on spreading unhelpful conspiracy theories and hatred, while our future is being jeopardised by a new crop of sophisticated digital fraudsters.”
The registrar detailed how high-level examination malpractices were uncovered during the 2025 UTME, leading to the withdrawal of some results and the arrest of several culprits nationwide.
According to him, JAMB discovered that certain Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres and school proprietors had colluded with hackers to gain remote access to candidates’ systems and submit pre-programmed answers to local servers at compromised centres.
Oloyede also highlighted the use of AI-enabled photo blending to impersonate candidates, noting that many of the impersonators were current undergraduates. Other fraudulent tactics included:
He said they also include registration with combined fingerprints through the combination of fingerprints from multiple persons for a single candidate’s registration.
He cited the extension of local area networks from some dubious centres to remote “strong rooms” as well as the pairing of candidates with professional mercenaries to gain access to the examination hall.
He revealed that over 3,000 candidates have been identified as either accomplices or beneficiaries of these crimes, stressing that many of them are university students already enrolled in institutions.
