*Says all now set for conduct of Mock Exams
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has allayed fears over this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UMTE), stating that it has adequately addressed the challenges encountered in the process of registration for every applicant.
A top official of JAMB said at the weekend that the agency was more than ready to conduct the scheduled mock examination for willing applicants to test-run the efficiency of the 600 Computer Based Test Center it approved for this year’s examination.
The date for conduct of the mock exam, which is voluntary for all registered JAMB applicants, according to officials, would be announced anytime this week.
JAMB has said it postponed the scheduled Mock Examination penultimate week, owing to technical hitches it encountered along the line, and more importantly to allow willing applicants who were yet to register as at then, partake in the test-run examination.
Reports from across the CBT Centers are indicating that the process of registration for this year’s JAMB has eased up since many applicants took the option of registering with their ATM cards, a new option made possible for the registration process by JAMB.
The development has eased off tension at the CBT Centers across the federation, in which case, most applicants who, hitherto, were not able to register have now been able to do so, using ATM cards.
JAMB, it was learnt, has started inspecting the CBT centers to ascertain their level compliance with a directive that each of them should have a minimum of 250 computer systems duly connected to a functional sever as well as a functional generating plant and CCTV within and outside the examination premises.
An official said activities during the 2017/18 UMTE from all the examination centers would be monitored at the National Headquarters of JAMB, a development he said will rule out any form of cheating during the examination.
JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede had earlier said the new innovations being introduced for conduct of 2017/18 UMTE were meant to address all manner of irregularities usually encountered during every JAMB examination, most especially cheating by students at different centers.
Oloyede had recently explained to stakeholders that JAMB has introduced a cutting-edge innovation to permanently capture the accurate data of every applicant, using their date of births, e-mail addresses and others for future references.
JAMB has also explained that the data on each applicant would remain in its system and updated from time to time, for use of every applicant from the moment they gained admission into tertiary institutions up till the time of their graduation and registration for the NYSC scheme and even for employment opportunities.
According to plan, the present crop of applicants will ultimately benefit from the captured data on them while each of them will continue to assess his or her own data at will, using only their dates of birth or e-mails as keys to unlock the information they may require.
JAMB has also disclosed that it was all out to safeguard the interest of every applicant beginning from this year by preventing multiple registration for the examination, a reason it said JAMB insisted that each applicant must submit his 10 fingers for biometrics during registration.
It was further learnt that JAMB has devised the means of preventing all tertiary institutions under its control from gambling with admissions for applicants, alluding to a new platform it had just developed to monitor the correct number of admissions each of the institutions will offer to applicants.
“From now on, JAMB will be monitoring the process of admission by Universities such that no school will gamble with the process and deny students admission unduly. The process is to protect the interest of post-secondary school students and guarantee them prompt admission, an official disclosed.
