JAMB registrar monitors UTME in Abuja, confident of hitch-free process

The Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede has monitored the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) exercise in Abuja.

Prof. Oloyede who monitored the exercise at the Kogo Computer Based Tests (CBT) Centre in Bwari Area Council of Abuja, expressed satisfaction with the process.

He reiterated the examination body’s earlier order warning parents of candidates to refrain from being around the examination premises, as the Board strictly prohibits them from being present during the examination.

The Guardian reports that the exercise which runs from 19th to 29th April 2024, in over 700 CBT centres nationwide, with over 1.98million candidates sitting.

Our correspondent observed that although some parents brought their children/wards to the centre, they stayed hundreds of metres away, while stern-looking security officials were on the ground to maintain law and order.

In a chat with newsmen, the JAMB registrar said reports at his disposal indicated that the exercise had been largely hitch-free across the country.

He, however, disclosed that only one CBT centre has encountered a challenge so far, even as he was upbeat that the first examination would be hitch free in more than 90 percent of the centres.

Oloyede, did not name the centre involved. He assured that students in the affected place would rewrite the examination.

His words: “Everything appears going very well. We want to thank the public for heeding our advice because it appears everybody is doing what is expected to do. Things will move smoothly if parents will keep away as can be seen in all the centres that I have visited this morning. They are the ones constituting the problem for the students. But you can see that everything is going on well.

“And it is important for us to note that when a session fails, it is normal that some of them would have problems. And when they have problem, it does not mean that when session one fails, you cannot say that those candidates that belong to those session, should do session two. They will have to step aside. The headquarters will have to be contacted. The earliest time they can be rescheduled will be after 4:30pm. So that Session Two can write.

“So the sessions have been programmed. If one fails, you can’t ask somebody to do an examination that others have done, the paper is in the open. They cannot write that paper again. Another exam has to be programmed for them from the headquarters.

“Some centres will fail. I have heard of only one throughout the country today but I expect about 10 percent of the centres to have one problem or the other because we know the level of development in different parts of the country.

“We are not encouraging it but when it happens, please do not disrupt others.”

While urging candidates to be upright, the JAMB helmsman pointed out that the Board had introduced some technological innovations that would ease out fraudsters.

He also took a swipe at tutorial centres, describing them as ‘centres for corruption’.

“Some of these tutorial classes, they are just what they are. They are not to tutoring anything. There are centers for corruption, examination malpractice, I can beat my chest and I have the facts. So parents who are going to pay money to them they are just deceiving themselves.

“You can see that most of them are owned by school dropouts. Somebody who does not have how can give? On this street where I’m standing you will see at least 30, tutorial centres.”