As the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) exercise enters day 2, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has assured candidates whose examinations were disrupted that they would be rescheduled to write them at a later date.
Public Communication Advisor of JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin stated this during the The Senate Committee on Tertiary Education monitoring of the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Abuja on Friday.
Benjamin was responding to questions raised by disgruntled parents and candidates whose examinations were disrupted at the Good Success Computer Based Test (CBT) Center, Utako
On his part, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator Mohammed Dandutse agreed that JAMB and CBT centers were faced with a lot of challenges but promised
to resolve them.
“From what we have seen, we have seen progress and we have seen a lot of challenges faced by the centres.
“And this one is not only in Abuja, it’s throughout the country. As a matter of fact, we sincerely appreciate what we have seen so far. Because the other issue is a technical issue, it happened yesterday and it also happened today, which was explained by the supervisor. But the truth of the matter, it has been a constraint to JAMB because these issues need to be addressed even before the exam takes place.
“As senators who are solely responsible for oversight and investigating the matters arising to this JAMB exam, I think we are going to look into how best JAMB will improve in most of the activities.
“We have already instructed them and told them to, as a matter of urgency, to take a definitive action so that the student will write the exam. And at the same time, we are going to review all the activities in JAMB so that we can make sure that these things do not happened again.
“So definitely we are going to address it and we are going to make sure that all the CBT centers are well functional and efficient. Because there is no moral justification for somebody to come from far away and will be living in trauma without writing the exam”, he said.
JAMB Spokesperson however maintained that the glitches were expected:
“Naturally, you should have one or two challenges here and there. It is not unusual and I don’t think there is anybody that will condone the exam using one thousand centers and then you expect that you won’t have any problem. But the most important thing is that if this problem do occur, are you prepared to handle them? And that is what we have just done there.
“That all those candidates will be rescheduled to another date, another center where they will sit the examination. It is natural to have a problem.
“As Nigerians, as citizens, that at least they are paying us with public funds, we are using public funds, they will expect 100%. But we know as operators that it is not easy, it is not possible for you to give 100%.
“But by the time you score 90%, at least you should have a term of. But for the candidate that have gone there, used the whole hours and sat inside the hall and then they didn’t take the exam, it is expected that they should vent their frustration. But it is natural”, he said.
Benjamin however, reassured that the Board would do the needful:
“We are assuring all Nigerians that every candidate who have registered for this exam will be given the opportunity to sit this exam. If your center fails today, you will be rescheduled again to take the exam. For any reason, even when you are rescheduled, and for any reason again, you are unable to sit the examination, you will be rescheduled again.
“That is why when we finish the exam, we have what we call the mop-up. The mop-up is to ensure that candidates whose center failed and they could not take the exam, we mop them up, give them a particular date for them to sit the examination. Because it’s a contract we have entered with them, they must sit the examination.
“But we’ll continue to do our best to ensure that we have minimal failure of these centers. And that is what we are doing. Out of 957 that we are using for this examination, I’m not sure we’ve had up to 10 or 8 centers that have failed”, he added.
A visibly displeased parent, Mr. David Afolanyo lamented that the situation could have been salvaged earlier:
“My daughter is writing, she was supposed to write yesterday. They said there was no network. They said we should come today to write. We came today. We’ve been here since 6 o’clock.
“And now they are telling us to go. They will send a text message to us. And our elected officials are here saying that they will investigate. Is it today they know that JAMB has a problem? In the Senate we have a committee on education. In the House of Rep we have a committee on education. So they want to tell me that they don’t know about this problem since three years ago.
“They are talking about relocating the children to another center. Some children paid more than 6,000, 10,000 Naira as transport to get here. Who will pay for them to go there again? Who will pay for them to go there again?”, he asked.
Similarly, a candidate named Eunice Peter who travelled from Kaduna for the examination vented out her frustration as she was unable to participate on both days:
“I came all the way from Kaduna to come and write this exam. I paid 7,000 Naira, I paid for a lodge. When I got to the lodge it was around 10pm. I left the lodge by 5am to look for this centre. Now they are telling me they will reschedule. So I have to pay all that 7,000 Naira to go back. It’s not nice”, she lamented.
