The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board yesterday explained why it has not released the results of this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Some of the candidates engaged in massive fraud and impersonation, thus putting their results in doubt, the board said.

JAMB’s Head of Information Dr. Fabian Benjamin told reporters in Abuja yesterday that the board has started screening the results of all the candidates who wrote the examination and that it would release it as soon as it the process is concluded.

Benjamin said: “We will not release the results in a hurry. We will do a lot of crosschecking and matchmaking to be sure that nobody that was engaged in illicit act will go scot free.

“We will release the results as soon as we finish checking the results to ensure that all those ones that we caught in various illicit registration acts are properly dealt with and those that we could not arrest are withheld.

“We will release the results when we finish doing our screening. We are screening the whole results. We don’t have the numbers now but we won’t release any result until we are sure of the whole thing.”

Benjamin said the board has arrested over 100 persons for impersonation and other fraudulent practices during the examination.

According to him, the board would fish out anyone who was engaged in sharp practices during the examination through their results and withhold them.

The JAMB spokesperson said: “We are picking them across the nation. As at today, we have picked up over a hundred candidates and we are still picking.

“Though we may not be able to pick all of them because of logistics problem and the state but what we are doing now for those we could not  pick who may have written the exam and gone, we are fishing them out true their result.”

Benjamin also said the board was investigating cases of biometric verification failure in some states.

He assured that the board would do the needful once it finished its investigation and found the reported cases to be genuine.

The JAMB spokesman said: “We will not be able to say genuine now until we do our due diligence. We are investigating because I told you that we have cases of illicit registration and we discovered that some of them created some scene when they discovered that their time for the exams clashed and they could not write the exam.

“We are giving everybody the benefit of doubt. We will look at all the perimeters and ensure that no one whose case is actually genuine suffers injustice. When we finish our exams we will be able to look at the whole thing (biometric issues).”

At some Computer Based Test (CBT) centres in Lagos, the biometric verification delayed the kickoff of the examination.

However, many candidates said they experienced little or no problem with equipment failure for the examination which ended yesterday nationwide.

At Bufuto Institute of Management and Information Technology, Egbe, a candidate, who simply called herself Uche, said her examination did not start by 9am as scheduled because of the slow verification process.

Uche said: “We did not start on time because after the biometrics, we had to wait until everybody has settled down then we were drilled on the dos and don’ts of the examination. There was no computer failure in my centre.”

Another candidate at the same centre, Amaka, who did her examination in the third batch (1.30pm), also said she experienced delayed verification.

“I did my examination by 1:30 and finished after 4pm. There was no equipment failure although we did not start on time because the biometrics took longer. They drilled us on how to operate the system. We thumb printed out,” she said.

At the two CBT centres at the Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), the examination went smoothly when The Nation visited.  There were no complaints about equipment failure.

Mrs. Margaret Abe, Biometric Verification Officer for YABATECH Centre Two, said there were no issues.

“We had 240 candidates of 250 for the 7-9a.m session; 242 for the 9.a.m session; and 241 for the 1.30pm session.  We had no issue with biometric; everything went smoothly,” she said.

Biometric Verification Officer for YABATECH Centre One, Mrs. Adebimpe Adesua, also said most of the candidates in her centre showed up and had no issues with the verification.

“For the first session we had 246 candidates; second session, 242 and third, we have 246. God will not allow us to have any problem with biometric verification.  It was part of my prayer point before coming that the candidates would not have problem with verification because if they cannot be verified effectively they cannot write the examination and that will be so sad,” she said.

Some candidates in some other centres were not so lucky with their computers, as they had to contend with delays.

Aisha Oseni, who wrote the exam at the Institute of Criminal Justice and Criminology Administration, Festac, said her centre experienced network failure on the first day of the examination.

She said: “My jamb examination was for 1:30 that is the third batch. In my centre, some computers tripped off due to network failure, but were restored back and we thumb printed out.’’

Samuel, another candidate, whose centre was at 11-30 event halls, Solebo junction, Ebute, Ikorodu, also experienced some set back.
“The system was tripping off. It delayed my exam for about 20 minutes but thank God I wrote well,” he said.