The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it has cancelled the registrations of 817 candidates in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

After meeting with stakeholders on Wednesday in Abuja, JAMB registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, said the registrations were invalidated over identified infractions bordering on the use of strange biometric fingerprints in the registration process.

He said some registration officers in the affected 178 Computer Based Test (CBT) centres added one of their fingerprints to complete the registration process for the candidates.

“Some of them did it deliberately for impersonation. But we can’t identify those who are genuine from those who are not genuine. We will cancel all the registrations and ask them to re-register,” the registrar said.

According to him, the 817 students will re-register for the exam, with the centres bearing the cost.

“As for the centres involved, we have just met with them, and they all confessed; nobody is disputing it, even students that were telling lies; they know we have the technology that won’t allow any lie to be accommodated.

“On their own (CBT owners), they suggested the solution. We will cancel the registrations of those concerned people and send a message to them to go back to the centres where they were registered, and the CBT centres will pay the board the cost of registration of the candidates,” he said.

The JAMB boss revealed that allowing a registration officer or any other person to add their finger while capturing a candidate’s biometric data could bring about impersonation in the exam and give such “strange” persons access to change vital details, including the exam centre.

“That is why we put in place a device that will throw up any strange finger that is not yours, and that is why we were able to identify them,” he added.

On the recent suspension of five CBT centres selling UTME registration pins above the stipulated price, Mr Oloyede said four of the five centres had been let off the hook.

He, however, said the affected CBT centres would refund the excess payments to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) for necessary action.

“Those who sold our pins to candidates beyond the approved limit, we have decided to lift the ban on four of the five after they have explained, and they have given us an apology, and they have explained what happened.

“One did not come, so we are not lifting the suspension. The four of them, one of them that came, we are still doing an investigation on the centre.

“As for those who overcharged, we are compiling the list of all the candidates who overpaid. The overpayments will be paid by those vendors and those institutions to the FCCPC.

“They will pay the money to them, and the law will determine what to do because I don’t believe the money should go back to the candidates because if you can pay N3,000, N5,000, N6,000 above the cost, you do not deserve any sympathy,” Mr Oloyede said.

(NAN)