The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has delisted over 22 Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres for allegedly defrauding 11,823 of its candidates to the tune of N59 million.
According to the registrar and chief executive officer of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, he said they carried out the fraud by charging candidates more than stipulated amount for effecting correction on profile as well as bypassing One-Time Password (OTP) required of candidates to initiate such changes.
While saying 22 centres from nine states were indicted for the infractions, Prof. Oloyede said any centre that shared the same ownership with the affected ones also stood suspended from all JAMB activities.
“The purpose of calling this meeting is to interact with 22 of you (institutions) that have grossly violated the prescription of the Board, particularly during Covid-19, and those who have done things not expected to do, thereby endangering the lives of candidates that they were supposed to protect.
“Not only that, we have discovered that the 22 of you have also defrauded candidates by collecting from them more than you are expected to collect and doing certain things that would bypass the normal process and procedure.
“We have invited you to this meeting to hear you out and also let the public know how some of you are engaging in criminal activities in the process of registering candidates. There are some of you that can even be classified as certified fraudsters.”
While saying the affected CBT centres owners would also be prosecuted, Prof. Oloyede said the Board has reversed the changes done illegally by affected candidates but the money paid to JAMB to effect the changes remain intact on their profiles.
He advised such candidates to change their passwords to avoid further damage following exposure of the secret code to operators of the now blacklisted CBT centres.
Speaking further, the JAMB boss lamented that all owners of the affected CBT centres are from one section of the country, saying such behaviour of fleecing both innocent and not innocent candidates of several amounts of money under the guise of effecting changes in registration details portends danger for the country.
“Some of you were collecting N3,000, N5,000 from candidates (for an amount that supposed to be N200 as service charge for the centre). What you have collected is over N59 Million.”
Oloyede added that JAMB has concrete proof of the infractions as the Board made payments made to the centres in order to actually detect the fraud that was being perpetrated by them.
