Police arrest father impersonating son as candidate during UTME

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has said that a father has been arrested alongside his son who is a candidate by the Police for impersonating his son during the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede disclosed this while on an inspection tour of the UTME centres in Kaduna on Wednesday.

He said the 2024 examination is largely well conducted, except for a few cases of impersonation, which became possible because some people now have multiple National Identity Number (NIN).

Meanwhile, Oloyede warned that those who cheat in the exams will be arrested either now or much later after the examination, pointing out that JAMB has improved its technology to check those engaging in all forms of examination malpractices.

Speaking to journalists shortly after the inspection at Kaduna State University University (KASU) CBT Centre, the JAMB Registrar said, “For those who engage in cheating, they should know that it does not pay. The technology is helping is to check that.

“Across the country, most of the problem we have is impersonation. For instance now, we say we have NIN, we now have cases of people with two NIN and therefore, that has defeated the purpose of identity verification.

“We are going to take that up with NIMC, that there are people who have two NIN.

“We have a case of a father impersonating his son, writing examination for the son and I wonder, are you not destroying your son’s future? Of course, two of them are now in custody.

“I can’t understand what the father will now tell his son when they are both locked up in the same cell. This happened definitely not in Kaduna, but I don’t want to disclose the state.

“So, it is largely cases of impersonation, but we are ahead of them; we are just picking them up like chicken now, because the facilities are there for us to see what they are doing and to pick them up. And even those that we have left for research purposes, they will see what will happen after the exams.”