JAMB's Biometric and AI Facial-Recognition Verification for Nigeria's National University Entrance Exam

JAMB (Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board) administers Nigeria's Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and deploys fingerprint and AI-based facial-recognition verification at Computer-Based Test centres nationwide to block candidate impersonation (so-called "mercenary" exam-taking), a long-standing fraud problem. JAMB registered 2,243,816 candidates for the 2026 UTME, according to multiple independent Nigerian news outlets.

In 2023, roughly 80,000 candidates were affected by biometric verification failures — mismatches, non-recognition and other errors — forcing JAMB to hold a rescheduled "mop-up" exam. Similar failures recurred in the 2025 mop-up exams.

JAMB's registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has publicly described how fraudsters use AI to blend two people's faces so that facial recognition can no longer distinguish the genuine candidate from a paid impersonator. He flagged a telling anomaly: in 2025, 1,787 candidates falsely declared themselves albino — a suspicious claim, since genuine albino Nigerians would number under 250 a year — apparently to exploit looser facial-verification thresholds.

This is best read as a mixed-evidence, cautionary case: the system operates at massive national scale but has not eliminated fraud and has repeatedly failed to verify genuine candidates, illustrating the operational fragility of AI biometrics deployed nationally without commensurate error-handling capacity.

Read the full analysis: https://guardian.ng/features/more-troubles-for-students-as-jambs-biometric-verification-falters/