Security agents in Nigeria have arrested 20 individuals accused of hacking the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
The arrests, carried out in Abuja by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Nigeria Police, were reported by Channels Television. The suspects are believed to be part of a syndicate of over 100 people who target servers of national exam bodies such as JAMB and the National Examinations Council (NECO).
According to security sources, the suspects confessed to attempting to sabotage JAMB’s computer-based test (CBT) system in a bid to discredit it and prevent other exam bodies like NECO and WAEC from adopting the method.
The group reportedly charged between ₦700,000 and ₦2 million to help candidates obtain inflated scores. They allegedly operated out of private schools and tutorial centres.
This year’s UTME, which began in April, has already been mired in controversy. Candidates reported being posted to faraway centres, and results released on May 9 showed that over 78% of candidates scored below 200 out of 400.
On May 14, JAMB Registrar Prof. Ishaq Oloyede confirmed that technical issues affected results at 157 centres due to server malfunctions, impacting nearly 380,000 candidates. JAMB later conducted a re-sit for the affected students.
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