The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has said that it has released the withheld results of 15,490 candidates, who participated at its April 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

The board made the disclosure in a statement signed by the board’s Head of Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, on Monday in Lagos State.

It said that the results released on during the weekend were part of the 34,120 it withheld while announcing the release of the results on May 11.

Recall that a total of 1,886,508 candidates registered for the examination, including candidates in foreign centres.

Out of this figure, the results of only 1,792,719 candidates were released on May 11.

“JAMB had during the release of the 2019 UTME results on Saturday, May 11, stressed that it would further probe the identity and involvement of some candidates who were suspected of being involved in one examination infraction or the other.

“As a result of this, the board has further cleared and released the results of 15,490 candidates in this category.

“This release follows the expert review of the cases in this category of candidates who were requested to upload certain credentials for scrutiny.

“At the conclusion of the review, these candidates were further classified into five groups,” it said.

It said that the first group were candidates who were sufficiently innocent.

The second was that of candidates with inconclusive evidence of culpability and were given the benefit of the doubt because of the board’s guiding principles, that it was better to let go many criminals than to punish one innocent person.

Reports shows that the board recently released results of candidates earlier cleared of wrongdoings and also conducted fresh examinations in two centres, Abuja and Otuoke in Bayelsa, where it was convinced of a genuine need to examine 490 candidates who had missed the April examination due to communication lapses.

The board said in the statement that candidates whose uploaded evidence necessitated further interrogations had been notified and invited through telephone calls, UTME profiles, SMS and emails to designated centres for further clarification on the evidence against them.

“It is in their interest to attend or such evidence will be taken as conclusive.

“There are also those whose culpability has been firmly established, necessitating cancellation of their results.

According to the board, results of additional 321 candidates have been conclusively cancelled and the affected persons notified.

It said that the other categories of candidates were those who did not heed to advice to upload evidence of their identities vis-a-vis the other impersonators, adding that there was clear evidence of their culpability.

It said that their results had been cancelled.

The board said that four additional centres were discovered to have been involved in examination fraud and had been de-listed by the board.

“The board has endured the pains of this tedious exercise in order to sanitise its processes and ensure that only genuine candidates are enrolled in the country’s tertiary education system.