The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has directed the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), the National Examinations Council (NECO), and the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB) to blacklist Computer-Based Test (CBT) centers and candidates found guilty of examination malpractices.
The minister’s directive, said to be his response to the mind-boggling sharp practices that trailed the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), was contained in his letter, dated May 27, 2025, to JAMB and other examination bodies.
Alausa particularly said any school or CBT centre involved in examination malpractice or acting as a miracle centre be derecognised for a number of years that will be determined by the examination body.
He said, “If any school/CBT centre is derecognised by any examination body, other sister examination bodies should follow suit and derecognised the same school/CBT centre for the same number of years to run concurrently. This will send a very strong signal to operators of these miracle centers.
“The student(s) involved in examination malpractice should be barred from sitting for any external examinations in Nigeria, such as those conducted by WAEC, NECO, NABTEB, etc., for three years using the instrumentality of NIN. Such a stringent measure will serve as a deterrent to other students and parents.” He explained that his action was backed by the extant law, especially Section 16(2) of the Examination Malpractices Act.
The Act, he highlighted, states that: “An examination body may, in the exercise of its powers under this section, circulate the name of an offending candidate, supervisor, invigilator, official, school, or examination centre to other examination bodies, which may impose similar punishment.”
Recall that JAMB had, while releasing the 2025 UTME resit results, claimed to have recorded what it referred to as “advanced malpractices“. JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, had said, “While some Nigerians are busy dissipating energies on conspiracy theories and the spread of hatred, the future of Nigeria is being put in jeopardy by an advanced level digitized fraud.”
“These unwholesome practices include collusion of certain CBT centre/school proprietors with the connivance of accredited centers to hack the networks of targeted CBT centers, thereby gaining control of candidates’ computers and remotely submitting their responses to the relevant local server of the centre, as recently discovered by the security agencies to whom we are profoundly grateful.
“AI-enabled photo blending of candidates with impersonators, many of whom are current undergraduate students; registration with combined fingerprints, which involves the combination of fingerprints from multiple persons for a single candidate’s registration. “There were also cases of extension of Local Area Networks (LAN) from centers to remote ‘strong rooms’; pairing of candidates with professional mercenaries after willful disruption of sitting arrangements who had registered for the UTME for the purpose of access to the examination hall. Unfortunately, many undergraduates of tertiary institutions are found to be involved in this nefarious practice.
“While releasing the results, it should be emphasized that recent discoveries, particularly by the security agencies, have necessitated the withdrawal of some of the results of implicated candidates across the country whose results have been previously released.
