By FUNMILAYO ADEYEMI

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has advised candidates writing the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) to desist from giving their details to fraudsters.

The Board Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, gave this counsel when fielding questions from newsmen during the monitoring exercise at the JAMB Professional Centre in Bwari on Friday.

“Today’s examination is very important to us because we have done so much engineering that we have been trying to do in the last seven years and we are only successful about it today for the first time.

“Those who are fraudsters, who are doing all sorts of things, they know they are in trouble because for the first time we are able to do certain things that we have been aspiring to do.

“We have found out that some of the candidates are giving their details to fraudsters and fortunately, we thank the security agencies as they have been marvellously good to us.

“Almost all the persons that have been doing this (fraudulent activities) are already in their nets. I won’t want to mention the numbers but I’m very happy to tell you that they are in the nets.

“We thank the Inspector-General of Police, director-general of the State Secret Service (SSS), director-general of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corp, and the Nigerian Police Force National CyberCrime Centre (NPF-NCC),” he said.

Oloyede, who commended the public, especially parents for their smooth conduct, said parents usually constitute problems for students in previous exercises.

“Everything appears to be going well. We want to thank the public for heeding our advice because it appears everybody is doing what they are expected to do.

“Things will move smoothly if parents can keep away. They are the ones constituting problems for the students but you can see everything is going on well,” he said.

The registrar appealed to the candidates who experienced glitches in the course of their examinations to remain calm as they would be rescheduled to write their examinations.

He explained that so far the exams had been going on smoothly as only one centre had been reported to have had one problem or the other.

“We appeal to the public to understand this, some centres will fail. I have heard of only one centre who has failed today.

“By the end of today, I expect about 10 per cent of the centres to have one problem or the other because we know the level of development in different parts of the country.

“We are not encouraging this but when it happens, please do not disrupt others.

“It is important to note that when a session fails because of a problem, you cannot bring those candidates to do session two, they will have to step aside and the headquarters will have to be contacted.

“The earliest time they can be scheduled will be after 4:30 p.m. so that those slated for section two and three can write and these candidates can now write for session four and in some cases, they can even be scheduled for the following day,” he said.

Oloyede called on owners of CBT centres to ensure that they keep their place secure by ensuring that non-candidates and parents keep their distance from the CBT centres.

He advised candidates to be upright in their dealings, while saying that most tutorial centres were only centres of corruption and malpractices, advising students to stop patronising them.

Also, Fatimah Abba, Supervisor-in-charge of JAMB Professional Centre, Kogo in Bwari, said there had not been any technical issues as the exercise had been going on smoothly.

Some of the candidates slated for the 8 a.m. exams expressed confidence in the conduct of the exams, calling on the board to sustain the tempo.

Yusrah Umar, a first time candidate, commended the exams’ conduct, while calling on the Board to increase the timing allocated to each subject to allow for better performance.

Another candidate, Victor Ezekiel, said there were no technical glitches as the systems worked effectively all through the exams.

NAN reports that over 500,000 candidates will be expected to have written the exams by the end of the first day.

About 1.9 million candidates are expected to write the UTME scheduled to commence on April 19 and end on April 29. (NAN)

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