When nearly two million young Nigerians filed into computer-based test centres this year, they carried with them the weight of ambition, sacrifice, and hope. But for 6,458 of them, those dreams were frozen under suspicionnot due to laziness or lack of preparation, but because of high-tech fraud.
In August, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB launched a probe into thousands of UTME results after uncovering evidence of sophisticated malpractice. Out of the 1,931,467 candidates who sat for the exam, many now face disqualification over allegations of identity manipulation, image blending, and even attempts to hack the local networks of test centres. Nineteen accredited centres were implicated in collusion, revealing a disturbing truth: the very institutions meant to uphold fairness are now part of the problem.
