Operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Nigerian Police Force have arrested 20 suspects for allegedly hacking the 2025 computer-based test examination conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
According to a report by Channels Television, the suspects were apprehended by the security operatives in Abuja,
The suspects are part of a syndicate believed to have over 100 persons, who specialise in hacking the computer servers of examination bodies like JAMB and the National Examinations Council (NECO).
According to security sources, the suspects have confessed to sabotaging the CBT system 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 entire hacking process was to influence high scores for special candidates who paid between ₦700,000 and ₦2 million.
“The strategy of these hackers involved mounting routers within the vicinity of the targeted CBT centres. The routers would in turn override JAMB platforms at the centres, making it easy for the special candidates who paid to get answers to the questions.
“The intrusion of the ghost software by the syndicate distorted the system, making answers provided by candidates during the exam to be at variance with the questions. This eventually led to the recorded mass failure,” a security source told The Nation Newspaper.
It was gathered that several members of the syndicate own private schools and colleges, and make huge sums of money from their special centres.
This comes two weeks after JAMB released the 2025 UTME results.
An analysis showed that more than 78 per cent of candidates who wrote the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) scored less than 200 points out of the 400 maximum points obtainable.
Recall that on May 14, the registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, said that the results of 379,997 candidates across 157 centres in its Lagos and South-East zones were affected.
He cited faulty server updates that prevented candidate responses from being uploaded during the first three days of the exam.
Oloyede said the problem, which was caused by one of its technical service providers, went undetected before the results were released.
The board conducted a resit examination, starting from May 16 and extending beyond May 19.
