Twenty suspects have been arrested by the Department of State Services, DSS, and the Nigerian Police Force, for allegedly hacking the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, server for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
According to AIT, the suspects are part of a syndicate believed to have over 100 persons who specialise in hacking of the computer servers of examination bodies like JAMB and the National Examinations Council, NECO.
Security sources are said to have confirmed that the suspects have confessed to sabotaging the CBT system in order to discredit JAMB and discourage students from using CBT for future examinations to be conducted by NECO and the West African Examination Council, WAEC.
“The syndicate would install an attacking software on the examination body hardware.
“The software, in turn, would remotely hack JAMB servers at any targeted CBT centre," the source quoted one of the suspects as confessing.
The entire hacking process was to influence high scores for special candidates who paid between N700,000 and N2 million.
This is coming amid controversy of the results of the 2025 UTME, which led to a resit examination organised by JAMB.
Results of the exercise are still being awaited despite earlier assurance by JAMB that it would be released last Wednesday.
The examination body has also hinted that candidates who missed the examination will have another opportunity regardless of their reason.