The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) yesterday said it will soon begin the sale of application forms for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Its Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, said an estimated 1.7 million candidates are expected to register and sit for the Computer-Based Test(CBT). He added that the board was also increasing the capacity of the CBT centres to maximise their effectiveness to examine more candidates within a given date.
He spoke at the Green Legacy, Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta while fielding questions from reporters after a meeting with stakeholders on information technology being introduced into the board’s examination to make it less stressful to candidates. According to Oloyede, the board was working with the possibility of conducting a “mock examination” to test its preparedness with the new technology and also examine some people that were eager to know their competence with the JAMB examination.
He noted that the stakeholders’ meeting was organised to enable people make inputs into the new ICT facilities and critique it before putting them into use. His words: “What we are doing appears to be suitable to majority of our stakeholders. It is a surprise to us that we are apprehensive of what we wanted to do that maybe we are going to create problem. We are more confident to go along with the sale of the form for 2017 UTME examination.
“I believed that Nigeria is ripe for this. Nigeria is more advanced than some of these countries. At least, we have three or four countries that are observing our examination and they want to go the way of the conduct of the examination. We are expecting 1.7 million candidates and we want to make sure we satisfy these candidates within a week or thereabouts. That is why we are increasing the capacity of the Computer-Based Test centres to be able to examine more candidates within a given date. If we are talking about 1.5 million candidates, it means that in a given day, about 60,000 or 70,000 candidates will take the examination. We have invited stakeholders to critique the process because we don’t want to go in the wrong direction. We are creating some ICT facilities and we want our stakeholders, prospective candidates, respected scholars, institutions and civil societies to come together and critique what we are doing, so that we can be sure before we go too far in a wrong direction. This is with a view of harvesting good ideas that could improve what we are doing. We thought we are coming here to get dismantled all we have put together. But what we are having are cheers that we can do it this way, or amend it that way.”
He added: “I must be frank with you, I cannot promise hitch-free examination because we are testing certain things. We are changing certain things. We want to question the status quo and of course, we expect a fightback by interests that will be trampled upon. We are going to be as sincere as possible in the direction we are going. We are going to be as flexible as humanly possible. We are not promising hitch-free examination.”
*This news story was sourced.
