Concern has been expressed by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, or JAMB, regarding the spread of criminal, deceptive, and fake messages directed at applicants for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, or UTME.
Fabian Benjamin, the board’s spokesperson, sounded the alarm in an Abuja statement on Wednesday.
Benjamin claimed that suspected scammers were spreading the messages in an attempt to trick gullible people.
He claims that in order to build a fraudulent sort code that imitates JAMB’s official messaging system, the criminals have taken advantage of the numerical form of UTME, 8863, and combined it with the Board’s sort code, 55019.
“Through this fraudulent scheme, they have been sending misleading messages to candidates, falsely claiming to detect manipulations in their JAMB details and urging them to contact certain individuals who will assist in resolving these fabricated issues.
“We want to emphasize that these messages are not from JAMB. Security agencies have been notified and are actively tracking the perpetrators behind this scam.
“Candidates are strongly advised to ignore such messages. This is a common tactic employed by fraudsters who seek to exploit the examination period to deceive and defraud innocent candidates,” he said.
The public was advised to maintain vigilance and evaluate the communications they receive critically by the tertiary institution examination body.
It further stated that any correspondence that deviates from its official channels or employs dubious language or directives ought to be regarded as false.
