By Alice Etuka, Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has released 36,540 additional Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, (UTME) results earlier withheld for investigation.
JAMB Spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin announced the development in a statement issued on Tuesday, May 14, 2024.
This was in addition to the 531 results released the previous week, bringing the total results released to 1,879,437.
JAMB, in the statement, denied reports circulation on the social media purporting to emanate from it that the outstanding 2024 UTME results, currently being subjected to intense scrutiny by its team of experts, had been compromised on account of a cyber security breach and that it was considering rescheduling the examination.
The Board asked the public to disregard the report, adding that it was created by fraudsters who were out to dupe unsuspecting members of the public:
“In another development, the attention of the Board was drawn to a fictitious letter concocted by a fraudster and circulated on social media purporting to emanate from the Board stating that the outstanding 2024 UTME results, currently being subjected to intense scrutiny by its team of experts, had been compromised on account of a cyber security breach and that it is considering rescheduling the examination.
“This is far from the truth as the said letter did not emanate from the Board. In fact, a closer look at the letter, which was not signed by any person, lacked every ingredient of a letter from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. The letter is, therefore, from those, who wish to destroy the integrity of the Board, by compromising its unassailable operational processes to mislead hapless candidates with the sole aim of extorting them.
“The Board reiterated, for the umpteenth time, that the results of its 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and other previous years are intact, not in any cloud storage and can, therefore, not be hacked by anybody.
“It is to be recalled that at the release of the 2024 UTME, the Board had announced that some results had been withheld as they were being subjected to further investigation. Out of these, 531 results were released recently. Others found to be involved in any examination misconduct are still undergoing investigation as the Board would want to review all the footage of all CCTV cameras placed in all its accredited centres to ascertain the candidate’s culpability or otherwise.
“At the conclusion of this exercise, the Board would publish its findings. Therefore, the public is urged to be wary of misleading information emanating from sources not linked to the Board be it religious or other sources.
“Equally disturbing is the misleading comments of some functionaries of some private institutions, who are linking the Board with “the prevailing low ‘cut-off marks’ when in practice, it was their institutions that had submitted lower minimum minimum admissible scores marks, even lower than what other institutions had presented.
“For the purpose of clarity, minimum admissible scores are first presented by individual institutions before such are debated to arrive at a benchmark agreed upon by all Heads of Institutions across the country at its annual Policy Meeting on Admissions and which no institution would be allowed to compromise.
“Also, the Board would also like to urge religious organisations to stick to their primary roles and not dabble into areas outside their calling as there are reports of some religious organisations making false representation to government at various levels for selfish ends, “it said.
