A man who allegedly presented himself online as the personal assistant to Nigeria’s examinations chief is in police custody, and investigators say the bank account he used to collect money belonged to a relative who had been buried weeks earlier.
The Nigeria Police Force says the suspect, Nwogba Arinze, was picked up on August 27, 2026 as part of an investigation into a syndicate accused of impersonating Professor Segun Aina, Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. A second man named in the case, Nnabuife Nwekpa of Onitsha, Anambra State, described by police as the principal suspect and a close relative of Arinze, has not been arrested. The Force says steps have begun to declare him wanted.
The case began with paperwork rather than a raid. According to a statement by the Force Public Relations Officer, Chief Superintendent of Police Anietie Iniedu, Aina submitted a petition on August 10, 2026 alleging criminal conspiracy, impersonation, identity theft and fraud. The Inspector General of Police, Olatunji Rilwan Disu, approved an investigation, which was handled by the Police Intelligence, Operations and Investigation Unit attached to JAMB’s national headquarters in Bwari, Abuja.
What investigators describe next is an unusual detail in a familiar type of case. Police say the syndicate set up accounts carrying the Registrar’s name, photograph and official title, and used them to approach members of the public with offers of official services and purported government and JAMB contracts. Police further allege that victims were asked to pay sums ranging from about N900,000 to N3 million, presented as processing fees and, in some instances, as inducements for officials at the Ministry of Education. None of those allegations has been tested in court, and the suspects have not been arraigned.
The first leads pointed to Nasarawa and Katsina states. Police say those individuals turned out to have lost money themselves, a reminder of how difficult these schemes are to map from the outside, since the people whose numbers appear in the chain are often the ones who paid. Analysis of phone numbers and bank details then led investigators to the South East. Police accounts of exactly where Arinze was picked up differ, with the Force statement placing the arrest in Anambra State and other police details placing it in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State. Officials say the wider investigation covered the Federal Capital Territory, Nasarawa, Katsina, Anambra and Ebonyi.
The account allegedly used to receive funds belonged to Edeh Chimezie Benedict, Arinze’s nephew, who had died. Police say Arinze had been given the account details and debit cards to help with funeral arrangements held on July 31, 2026, and that he later used them to obscure his own identity. A SIM card registered in the dead man’s name and a burial poster were among items recovered, according to the Force. Iniedu says Arinze remains in custody and is cooperating with efforts to locate Nwekpa and any other accomplices.
The context matters here, because JAMB has become one of the most impersonated institutions in Nigeria’s public sector. Aina took office on July 31, 2026 as the board’s sixth substantive Registrar, succeeding Professor Is haq Oloyede, whose decade in the role ended that day. Appointed on May 21, 2026 and 40 years old, Aina is the youngest person to hold the position. At the handover ceremony he identified protecting the board’s integrity as his first priority, describing integrity as the foundation of everything else the board achieves.
That priority was inherited rather than chosen. In the months before the leadership change, JAMB publicly disowned a Sterling Bank account being used to collect N15,700 from candidates who had missed the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and were promised rescheduling. It flagged fraudulent text messages built to mimic its official 55019 short code. It confirmed the re arrest of Emmanuel Akataka, a suspect who operated under the invented persona Official Frederick and, according to the board, took money from 94 candidates for score manipulation services that do not exist. During the 2026 UTME, in which more than two million candidates were expected and results for 632,788 were released after the first day alone, JAMB said two candidates and a parent were in custody for using artificial intelligence tools to falsify result notifications. It also dismissed a circulating result slip claiming a score of 394, pointing out that its registration numbers are system generated and that results are view only.
The pattern across those cases is consistent. The fraud does not target JAMB’s systems, which the board has steadily hardened, but the trust attached to its name. That is also the vulnerability at the centre of this investigation, where the asset allegedly stolen was not data but the Registrar’s public identity.
National figures show why identity based schemes remain attractive. Data presented by the Nigeria Inter Bank Settlement System puts digital payment fraud losses at N25.85 billion in 2025, a decline of about 51 per cent from N52.26 billion in 2024, though NIBSS notes the 2024 total was inflated by a single incident of N31.1 billion involving one entity. Losses stood at roughly N17.67 billion in 2023. Reported cases fell from 123,918 in 2021 to 67,518 in 2025. NIBSS identifies social engineering, the manipulation of people rather than software, as the most common technique in the ecosystem, and its Managing Director, Premier Oiwoh, has flagged a worrying decline in institutional fraud reporting, with the number of institutions actively reporting dropping from a peak of 45 in the second quarter of 2024 to 34 by the end of 2025. A Person of Interest Portal built with the Central Bank of Nigeria and security agencies has captured 13,417 individuals linked to fraudulent activity since 2019.
Where this case goes next depends on prosecution. Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act criminalises online impersonation and identity theft, but conviction rates in such matters are rarely published, and cases involving accounts opened or operated in other people’s names often stall on evidence linking a specific person to specific transactions. Police have not said when Arinze will be charged. For candidates and their families, the practical guidance from JAMB has not changed: the board communicates through its official channels, and no individual, however credentialled they appear, can influence a result.