JAMB fails to conduct UTME in Maiduguri

JAMB Registrar and Chief Executive, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde
| credits: File copy

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board could not conduct the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in Maiduguri, Borno State.

The JAMB Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, stated this while monitoring the conduct of the UTME in Abuja on Saturday.

The development came as confusion marked the exercise in some examination centres in Akwa Ibom State.

The board conducted its Dual-Based Test and Paper Pencil Test on Saturday with no fewer than 1,015,504 candidates writing the examination. The tests qualify the candidates for admission to the nation’s universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

Another batch of 616,574 candidates from May 17, 2014, will write the Computer-Based Test.

The board had last Tuesday assured that it had made adequate arrangements to ensure a hitch-free conduct of the UMTE in all the states, including Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.

But speaking on Saturday, Ojerinde said, “JAMB candidates who were supposed to go to Maiduguri to write their exams have decided to stay at home. There are about 400 of them. We have told them we will cater for them. They are afraid of what will happen to them.”

Ojerinde said the affected candidates would sit for CBT instead of the PPT that they initially applied to write.

The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education, John Nwaobiala, who also spoke on the occasion, debunked reports that UTME candidates were among those attacked in Maiduguri.

He said, “There were some challenges that came up and the feeling was that since there were disturbances in that area, it might affect students movement.

“What we are doing now is to ensure we have an opportunity.  The CBT is coming up so they will have the opportunity to write the examination. There will be no disenfranchisement of the candidate.”

Meanwhile, one of our correspondents, who monitored the examination in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, reported that confusion reigned in some centres in the state.

At Four Town Secondary School, Uyo, for instance, there were cases where science candidates were given arts papers, while candidates for arts subjects were given science papers to write.

However, the supervisor at the centre, Dr. Maria Afangide, attributed the swapping of the subjects to the misplacement of numbers by the candidates.

In Ibadan, Oyo State, there was a huge presence of security operatives, with police officers and men of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps at many of the centres.

A mild drama played out midway into the examination as the security men apprehended two persons at the CBT Centre, University of Ibadan. The police accused the suspects of searching the bags of candidates left outside the examination hall.

They later regained their freedom after through screening.

In a related development, a JAMB official, who craved anonymity because she was not authorised to speak on behalf of the board, said there were no cases of examination malpractice during the exercise.

She said, “The candidates settled down early enough and the materials for the examination arrived at the centre at the expected time. We had enough invigilators around and the candidates behaved well. The arrangement of today’s UTME and adequate security did not give room for cheating and I am sure the candidates are also aware that anyone caught could go to jail.”