Two suspects have been arrested by the police over their alleged involvement in impersonation during the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) registration.
The suspects identified as 50-year-old Sesan Obasa, and his alleged accomplice, Salvation Terhembe, were arrested and paraded before journalists at the headquarters of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), in Bwari, Abuja.
According to a statement issued on Friday by JAMB’s spokesman, Fabian Benjamin, Terhembe was picked up by the staff of JAMB at one of the board’s registration centres in Bwari, following his unsuccessful attempts to carry out the UTME registration on behalf of Obasa.
The 36-year-old had appeared before a JAMB registration official on Thursday and could have successfully scaled the first accreditation when the picture on the National Identification Number, NIN, showed he was impersonating Obasa.
Terhembe, who admitted to carrying out the act, said he was contacted by Obasa to supply his information for registration at the JAMB center because he was busy with work, adding however that he was only assisting him and not aware that his actions breached any rule of JAMB.
In defending his action, the 50-year-old suspect who had applied to study public administration, said he was misled by his determination to go to school, which moved him with desperation to put in for JAMB this year.
He admitted that Terhembe carried out UTME registration on his behalf, and pleaded for leniency as he was completely unaware that his actions were tantamount to identify fraud.
Reacting to the arrest, JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, lauded the efficacy of NIN in checkmating Identity fraud, noting that if not for the use of NIN, the impersonator would have successfully carried out his registration.
“You can see the advantages of NIN; by the time we put this boy to test, you would see that he had done registration in previous years for other people but because of that we were able to uncover this,” he said.
Oloyede, who was visibly miffed by the activities of the duo, said they were “fraudsters,” vowing to hand them over to the police.
