Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Wednesday handed over 38 operators of various Computer Based Test (CBT) centres drawn from the six geopolitical zones to law enforcement officers for alleged cyber crime using the Virtual Private Network (VPN).
VPN extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing services were directly connected to the private network.
The operators were accused of extending the VPN to illegal outposts to register some candidates for the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and those seeking admission through Direct Entry (DE).
During a one-on-one engagement between the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, and the arrested CBT operators at the board’s headquarters in Bwari, revealed that some registered fictitious names and National Identity Numbers (NIN) with JAMB as staff of the CBT centres.
By implication, the fate of all UTME/DE candidates who knowingly or ignorantly registered at the illegal registration centres is presently unknown as there’s no clear indication if they would be allowed to sit for this year’s examinations or other arrangements would be put in place to capture them.
“An average parent does not want the child to queue even for 10 minutes. They will prefer that they will go and pay this people extra money and they will claim to have done it for them not knowing the incalculable damage that they are doing to their own children.
“We have published the list of all the centres and they are available in all our state offices across the country and in our weekly bulletin, including those we have blacklisted. Let people register in approved CBT centres and no candidate should give their password or code to anybody not even to your parents,” he added.