Over N10 million meant to be paid to ad-hoc staff of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, as allowance has been hijacked into the accounts of over a dozen fraudsters who gained entry into the internet site of the board.
To this end, the board has said the mobile phone would henceforth be the only major requirement for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, and Direct Entry, DE registration processes.
Registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, who disclosed that the use of email is no longer required for the registration exercise explained that the new system was to ensure that candidates’ information is not exposed to dubious cyber cafe operators and other criminal elements.
Oloyede, who disclosed this to newsmen, Wednesday, in Abuja, said the fraudsters altered profiles of the board’s ad hoc staff, diverting the money meant for their allowances.
According to him, the scam was uncovered after the board undertook a careful investigation, leading to the arrest of one Sahabi Zubairu from Takum in Taraba State, and several others.
Explaining that government policy “requires that monies meant for ad-hoc staff are paid directly into the accounts of the beneficiaries”, he regretted that the situation gave room to the challenge the board was encountering.
He decried the failure of the accounting department to detect the fraud by cross-checking the names on the accounts to ensure that they tallied with those listed on the website or owners of the codes.
The JAMB boss who noted that ad-hoc staff of the board have since been paid, however, assured that the stolen money will be recovered, as he vowed to hand perpetrators of the crime over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, for further investigation and prosecution.
On how the fraudsters successfully gained access to the profiles of the ad-hoc staff, he explained that the fraudsters used key logger, a software that allows access to the profile of anyone who has logged in using a public cybercafé even after the person has logged out and gone.
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