Digital Exam Cheats Busted: JAMB Reveals Alarming New Malpractice Trend

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has urged the adoption of a new and more aggressive strategy to combat exam malpractice in Nigeria. The board emphasized the urgent need to tackle the rising cases of digital examination fraud in the country.

This call was made by JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, as highlighted in the board’s bulletin released on Monday.

Addressing concerns surrounding the 2025 examinations, Oloyede described the emerging trend of digital exam fraud as highly sophisticated and alarming, with serious implications for the future of education.

He warned that such malpractice undermines learning, research, and national development, urging immediate intervention to curb these activities.

The registrar also criticized those who focus their energy on spreading baseless conspiracy theories and fostering division instead of collaborating with stakeholders to fight this new wave of digital fraud.

“During the 2025 exams, further high-level fraud was detected, leading to the withdrawal of some results and the arrest of several perpetrators nationwide,” Oloyede stated.

He revealed that some CBT centres and school officials conspired to hack into targeted CBT networks. These hackers remotely took control of candidates’ computers and submitted their answers to local servers of the compromised centres.

Among the sophisticated fraud techniques uncovered were AI-enabled photo blending, which merged candidates’ images with those of impersonators—many of whom are current university students.

Other fraudulent practices included registering candidates with combined fingerprints from multiple individuals, extending local area networks from suspicious centres to remote “strong rooms,” and pairing candidates with professional mercenaries to gain unauthorized exam access.

The registrar disclosed that over 3,000 candidates have been identified as either collaborators or beneficiaries in these schemes, with many undergraduates implicated.