According to a Vanguard report, a primary school teacher, Timothy Samson, has been arrested while impersonating his brother.
This is even as the conduct of the exam inches towards end on Saturday.
Vanguard reports that Mr Samuel Timothy, a 30 year old teacher, was picked up after the Eagle eyes of security personnel from the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, and some personnel of JAMB detected that he was not a candidate of the examination he was writing at the Air Mass Computer Institute, in Madalla, Niger State.
He was said to have sneaked into the examination hall to write for his younger brother, Samson Samuel,said to be indisposed following a sudden sickness.
The arrest of Mr Timothy came as the Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Is-haq Oloyede accused parents and private tutorial centre owners of being responsible for mass examination malpractices in UTME.
Oloyede revealed that the board had identified 14 centres across the country involved in malpractice and assuring that the examination body would clamp down on the centres while their operators will be prosecuted.
Timothy, who was paraded Thursday, by the officials of the NSCDC and JAMB at the headquarters of the tertiary institutions’ examination body at Bwari, Abuja, according to JAMB Supervisor at the examination centre, Sakina Tafida, had evaded screening strategies and sneaked into the exam hall.
Tafida said: “But we found that the number of exam slips we collected after fingerprint screening was less than the number of candidates in the hall.
He skipped fingerprint device and the photograph on the slip he gave us later was that of his brother, Samson Samuel,” she said.
The arrested teacher, according to Tafida, confessed to have impersonated his brother who was sick.
“When asked, Timothy said he worked as a teacher at a primary school in Gwagwalada, Abuja and decided to impersonate his brother on the examination “because my brother was sick,“ Tafida explained.
According to Tafida, ”the mother of the boy, who claimed to be a prophet, directed the boy to sit the examination for his brother.”
Meanwhile, the JAMB boss, Ishaq Oloyede, has said the board would not reschedule UTME for those who did not participate in the exercise for whatever reasons unlike what he said, obtained last year.
Oloyede said reports have also indicated that some parents had allegedly negotiated with some private coordinators who assured them of success at all cost during the UTME.
Oyolede said candidates whose thumbs were not recognised for verification by the biometric machines, and that such candidates might have registered illegally.
He disclosed said that the board had arrested some operators of illegal UTME registration centres set up to defraud applicants.
“They were using something they call team viewer which will definitely give biometric problem because these candidates were not physically captured at the authentic centre.
“We would not be held responsible for that and there won’t be any form of rescheduling for anybody, I did that last year out of ignorance.’’
He described the general conduct of the UTME nationwide as highly successful and attributed the success to use of improved modern technology which has prevented most illegal acts people were used to.
Commenting on the malpractice, Oloyede warned parents to steer clear of their wards shame actions in engaging in malpractice.
Hear him: “Parents need to disassociate themselves from this type of shameful attitude.
“It is against any type of parenting that you want to inculcate the spirit of deceit into your children; I think even bad people do not want to be succeeded by bad people.
“The woman should have just said she is a mother and not that she is a prophet; you are doing something shameful, do not bring God into it at all.
“No religion would allow for a mother to tell one of her sons to go and write exams for the other.
“If someone is unfortunate to be corrupt, he or she should ask God to terminate it at his own level, but conscious efforts at transmitting that culture to the next generation is very painful.’’
The registrar also frowned at those hiding behind religion to commit crimes including examination malpractice.
“One said he is a Catholic priest; there’s another one from Abia and now, this mother said she’s a prophet, people in Nigeria just use religion to exploit others.
“They go to churches, establish centres in the name of helping the church only to use them for their selfish purposes,’’ he said.
He explained that the board was able to detect, through the use of technology, that most of the cabling issues at CBT centres, were pre-arranged.
“Their intentions are to help people not knowing that we now have a device that monitors every computer system in every centre, via a code.
“We are able to detect now, people who are able to write the exams, answering 180 questions in just 12 minutes.
“We also have three to four persons who wrote the examinations on the same computer at a session not knowing we have the identity of every computer,“ He said, explaining that the development was among reasons that forced the board not to release some results on immediately unlike previous years.
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