…it’s their season
From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has raised the alarm about the activities of internet fraudsters and mischief makers who are out to deceived, mislead and defraud “gullible” candidates that participated in the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
JAMB said the mischief makers whose activities are mostly on the digital space target candidates who, perhaps, displayed desperation, ignorance, and naivity, with some unrealistic promises, thus misleading them into believing some non-existing opportunities/chances as regards the 2024 UTME and admission processes.
JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, in a statement, on Tuesday, stressed the importance of candidates protecting the registration details and not disclosing such sensitive information to any person(s) who might end up using them for fraudulent purposes.
He said the attitude of these mischief makers would only propel JAMB to further tighten the process of checking its UTME results, to make it more personalized and sure would be stringent when it should actually be a simple and straightforward exercise.
He, however, confirmed that the Board is even considering adding new features such as registration number to the existing UTME Result checking process going forward to make it extra difficult for anybody to edit.
He reiterated that neither its 2024 UTME results nor any of its processes have been compromised, hence it will continue to protect the integrity of its systems against such malicious actors who are hell-bent on creating confusion where none existed.
Dr. Fabian said the attention of JAMB was recently drawn to some fallacious publications purporting that an unknown candidate, who did not sit the 2024 UTME obtained scores. “This is fake, malicious and a calculated attempt to undermine the integrity of the Board. The public should disregard such irresponsible publications.
“To underscore the fact that the publication was crafted by mischief makers to paint the Board in bad light, the publication, which levels such an allegation provided no details of such candidate for proper verification.
“The Board is not surprised as this is the season of mischief makers who would want to deceive ‘gullible’ candidates. The examination template of the Board was designed with the highest sense of responsibility, and was not an allocation platform where scores are doled out to candidates.
“It is most unfortunate that anybody could even believe such narration or that the story could even gain traction given the Board’s integrity. This, again, has gone to further vindicate JAMB’s stance that candidates should desist from disclosing their classified details to third-parties.
“Nevertheless, in investigating some of these allegations, the Board discovered that some of these mischief makers copy results sent to other candidates, edit the details sent to themselves and then parade this as emanating from the Board.
“The Board, thus challenged any candidate, parent or anybody with such a claim or information to prove it wrong by coming forward with the details of such claims, and the phone number with which such results were conveyed.”
JAMB, however, maintained that, for now, the method of checking the 2024 UTME remains sending UTMERESULT to 55019 or 66019 and not through any other process, adding that the result, at the moment, is not on the Board’s website.