Mindboggling 2025 JAMB exam fraud

 

According to EduTimes Africa of May 16, 2025, former Vice-Chancellor of University of Ilorin, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede served as the Vice-Chancellor of the University from 2007 to 2012. Under his leadership, UNILORIN rose to become one of the most stable and efficient public universities in Nigeria, maintaining an uninterrupted academic calendar. While in office as VC, Oloyede was instrumental in integrating ICT and e-learning into the university’s curriculum. His initiatives led to the modernisation of UNILORIN’s administrative and academic processes. He was appointed JAMB Registrar in August 2016 by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari. Since then, he has been credited with overhauling the operations of the examination body and boosting transparency. Oloyede introduced a technology-driven reform of JAMB, including the full digitisation of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, the use of Computer-Based Testing, and real-time monitoring of exam centres.

Under his leadership, JAMB’s revenue increased significantly. He blocked financial leakages and returned billions of Naira to the federal government—an unprecedented feat in the board’s history. The Registrar is a firm advocate against examination malpractice. He has implemented stringent measures, including biometric verification, CCTV monitoring, and real-time data analytics to curb cheating and impersonation. He introduced Central Admission Processing System, a platform that ensures merit-based and transparent admission processes into Nigerian tertiary institutions. CAPS has helped eliminate admission bias and fraud. Oloyede has championed a unified model of tertiary education assessment, advocating for synergy among universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education in admission standards and quality assurance.

No doubt history will be kind to the erudite scholar for deploying innovative tech solution to combat examination fraud. It is however important to stress that technology has its limitation and is never a one-size-fits-all solution. In May this year Prof. Ishaq Oloyede wept like a baby in public glare over the human error and glitches experienced in the conduct of this year’s UTME. According to this newspaper in its May 15, 2025 edition, a technical review conducted by the JAMB revealed that a critical oversight in server updates, coupled with human error, led to the invalidation of results for 379,997 candidates in the five states of the South East and Lagos State who sat for the 2025 UTME. JAMB partnered with the Educare Technical Team to verify the scale of the impact.

The revelation was made during a high-level technical review session held on Wednesday, May 15, 2025 at JAMB’s headquarters in Abuja. The emergency meeting, chaired by the Registrar, was convened in response to the widespread outcry that followed the release of unusually low scores from the 2025 UTME the previous Friday. Data revealed that over 1.5 million out of the 1.9 million candidates, whose results were released by the board, scored less than 200 marks. According to the report, the error was rooted in the uneven deployment of a critical server patch required to support major innovations introduced in this year’s UTME. While these upgrades were correctly applied to servers in the Kaduna (KAD) cluster, they were not deployed to the Lagos (LAG) cluster, which services Lagos and the South-East region. This led to widespread mismatches in answer interpretation and validation.

“Over 14,000 of those records were traced to the affected centres under the LAG server cluster,” the report confirmed, adding that internal and external audits showed significant overlap in results, supporting the conclusion of systemic malfunction. As a result, approximately 92 centres in the South-East and 65 centres in Lagos — totalling 157 centres — operated using outdated server logic that could not appropriately handle the new answer submission/marking structure. This affected an estimated 379,997 candidates, whose results were severely impacted due to system mismatches during answer validation,” the report stated. It added, “This review, conducted with thoroughness and transparency, signifies JAMB’s resolve to uphold the sanctity of its examination processes. Going forward, stronger deployment validation protocols and real-time monitoring mechanisms will be implemented to prevent such oversights.”

It is interesting to note that JAMB did not allow the matter to die, the Registrar empanelled a Special Committee on Examination Infractions led by a senior Civil Society colleague and CEO of The Albino Foundation Africa, Jake Epelle. JAMB inaugurated the Special Committee on August 18 with a mandate to investigate, review and recommend measures to curb the rising wave of technologically enabled examination malpractice. The Special Committee uncovered more than 6,000 cases of technology-enabled malpractices in the 2025 UTME. The committee’s chairman disclosed the findings while presenting its report in Abuja on Monday, September 8, 2025. Epelle revealed that 1,878 candidates falsely claimed to be albinos, while others engaged in biometric fraud and digital identity manipulation during the conduct of the examination. The panel also recorded multiple cases of fake National Identification Numbers, credential forgery, and syndicate-backed fraud schemes.

Epelle was quoted as saying: “We documented 4,251 cases of ‘finger blending’, 190 cases of AI-assisted image morphing, 1,878 false declarations of albinism, and numerous cases of credential forgery, multiple NIN registrations, and solicitation schemes. This fraud is not the work of candidates alone—it is sustained by syndicates involving some CBT centres, schools, parents, tutorial operators, and even technical accomplices.” The committee further warned that existing legal frameworks remain inadequate to address the growing threat of biometric and digital fraud, stressing that public trust in the examination system is already being eroded.

In its recommendations, the panel urged JAMB to “deploy AI-powered biometric anomaly detection, dual verification systems, real-time monitoring, and a National Examination Security Operations Centre. It also called for the board to “cancel results of confirmed fraudulent candidates, impose bans of 1–3 years, prosecute both candidates and their collaborators, and create a Central Sanctions Registry accessible to institutions and employers. The report further advised JAMB to “strengthen mobile-first self-service platforms, digitise correction workflows, tighten disability verification, and ban bulk school-led registrations. It also urged legal reform, recommending amendments to the JAMB Act and the Examination Malpractice Act “to recognise biometric and digital fraud, and provide for a Legal Unit within JAMB.”

These startling revelations show that technology is not fool proof and that while it helps to make things easy for users, it can also cause incalculable damage and lead to trust deficit if not well handled. That’s why I urge Nigerians who think electronic voting or mandatory transmission of election results to INEC’s Election Result Viewing Portal is a panacea to electoral fraud to hurry slowly. Many haven’t forgiven INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu about the glitch recorded in posting 2023 presidential election result real-time. However, what happened in JAMB in 2025 has shown that desperate students and parents just like desperate politicians can throw spanner in the wheel of progress in order to have their way. I fully endorse the recommendations of Epelle committee and commend Prof. Ishaq Oloyede on his matured and professional handling of the 2025 UTME debacle.