The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has begun prosecuting five individuals alleged to be ringleaders of a large-scale admission fraud involving forged tertiary institution admission letters issued to 17,417 candidates.
According to Fabian Benjamin, the board’s spokesperson, the suspects confessed to the crime and are currently facing trial at the Federal High Court in Abuja. Their arrests were made possible through a collaborative investigation with the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre.
Benjamin stated that “a total of 17,417 candidates were flagged as beneficiaries of the scam.”
During the course of the investigation, JAMB cleared 6,903 candidates who had minor discrepancies in their admission processes between 2024 and May 2025. These candidates were given an opportunity to regularise their records.
Following this clearance, 10,514 candidates were referred to designated police investigation offices. Of these, 5,669 were discovered to have “outrightly procured forged letters,” according to Benjamin.
Additionally, 4,832 candidates, whose admissions were initially undisclosed to JAMB, are now being processed for regularisation by their awarding institutions under a ministerial waiver covering 2017 to 2020. However, JAMB noted that some of these candidates bypassed official procedures and instead engaged the fraudulent syndicate.
Benjamin disclosed that “some of these candidates went ahead to engage the syndicate to side-step the process.”
In another development, 13 other cases were identified due to errors either by omission or commission on the part of the candidates themselves. Of these, 12 were candidates who registered in 2017, the year JAMB introduced the Central Admissions Processing System, CAPS.
Benjamin explained that “12 of the 13 candidates registered in 2017 when CAPS was established.”
JAMB issued a stern warning to candidates, stating that anyone found to have “employed or solicited assistance from examination and certificate fraudsters would face prosecution.”
The board further cautioned that “candidates who deviate from the laid-down procedures for registration, examination, or admission would face the consequences.”
CAPS, introduced in 2017, was designed to streamline the admission process and eliminate irregularities. JAMB emphasized that any admission offered outside the CAPS framework is considered “undisclosed” or “illegal.”
While the board previously regularised such admissions under a ministerial waiver between 2017 and 2020, it has now declared that “all admissions offered outside CAPS since 2020 have now been deemed illegal and cannot be regularised.”
