There is no plan to reduce the marks of candidates who sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has declared.
The declaration is in reaction to reports that the marks of the candidates were being reduced.
In a statement by its Head of Media and Publicity, Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB said the report which it described as fake was being spread by a gang based in Edo State with affiliates in Lagos and other states.
The report, JAMB said, was being spread to defraud candidates and their parents.
The statement reads in part: “A gang being coordinated from a town called Igarra in Edo State with affiliates in Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Abia, Anambra and Plateau states are circulating fake notice of impending reduction of UTME scores.
“This is with intent to extort and defraud parents and candidates.
“Candidates results would be received on their registered cell phones as soon as the on going scrutiny of the examination centres are completed and publicly announced.
“Only the fraudulent candidates or parents stand being defrauded on this matter.”
It would be recalled that following alleged involvement in malpractice, JAMB recently arrested two biological children of an accredited Computer Based Test, CBT, centre owner in Lagos.
The arrest was made during a monitoring tour of various CBT centres in Lagos State by the board’s Registrar, Prof. Is’haq Oloyede.
Oloyede said over 100 “professional examination writers” had so far been arrested and handed over to the law enforcement agencies as over one million candidates had so far written the examination nationwide.
The arrested children involved in the malpractice were said to have been caught using their mobile telephones to screenshot questions of the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
“We were on our normal monitoring when this alarm came in that this centre, there was an examination malpractice that took place.
“I was informed that what they did was to take screen shoots of the examination questions, compile them and forward same to some of these tutorial centres which, in turn, used the questions to defraud prospective candidates.
“Unfortunately they are not aware that we are ahead of them. We have put in place, cutting edge technologies that expose fraudulent practices intended to undermine the integrity of our examination.
“What they did here was to deliberately disconnect the CCTV, thinking that we would not be able to track whatever happened here through our central CCTV in Abuja.
“One thing these fraudsters failed to understand is that we do not repeat questions used as far back as four or five years ago, let alone using them for any of the four sessions we deploy per day.
“These questions have been standardised and so they can never be the same.
“So you see these kinds of things are happening in Lagos. You can then imagine what happens elsewhere.
“We will be glad if these fraudsters are prosecuted even if the centre owners are let off the hook,” he said.
