No fewer than five people have been arrested by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) for various registration infractions in the ongoing 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to be conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB).

The fraudsters, according to a statement issuedon Saturdayin Abuja by Fabian Benjamin, Head, Media JAMB, were arrested from various locations in the country where they were perpetrating their nefarious activities.

“They were arrested from Oyo, Ogun and Maiduguri by officers and men of the NSCDC and brought to Abuja where startling revelations of their operations were made. In the presence of the Commandant General, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Alh. Abdullahi Gana Mohamadu, the fraudsters confessed to numerous registration infractions that the Board couldn't imagine.

“Some of these registration thieves are Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres owners licensed by JAMB to conduct registration exercise for the candidates planning to take the forthcoming UTME.

“More worrisome is the massive investment byE-Kindle CBT centres to penetrate the airtel system we are using, to perpetrate all forms of practices. They register candidates without proper biometric which means such candidates will have problems with their details during examination if not corrected immediately.

“Frominvestigation at the headquarters of the NSCDC, it was clear that they had powerful men backing them to thwart the efforts of JAMB. If not, how will you justify them spending over N20 million to construct a radio platformjust to hack into the Board's registration exercise if not to destroy the entire system and put JAMB in bad light?”

Fabian also disclosed that JAMB had given access code only to accredited CBT centres to partake in the registration exercise but the operatorsin turn used privileged information at their disposal in connivance with Honey Comb Centre and Bright Internationalfor pecuniary motive and created confusion for the examinationbody as procedures, guidelines and standards were compromised.

He said that in Maiduguri, the Board discovered that their router meant for Abia State was being used in Maiduguri to register candidates but unknown to them, the access codes were personalised coupled with features to detect abuses aimed at circumventing the registration process. “They fraudulently triedto manipulate the system to give a semblance of the Board platform to deceivecandidates as if a valid registration has been carried out.

“These registration thieves deployed fake biometric capturing mechanisms and super-imposed registration slip just to satisfy the curiosity of innocent candidates that their registrationwas successful. However, on the day of examination, such candidates’ data would either be edited or not found on the JAMB data base, such candidates would not be verified during the examination proper.

JAMB head of media also observed that, “This investigation has clearly shown that the Board under Prof. Is-haq Oloyede may be in for a bigger fight given his stand on anti-corruption.”