Oloyode: JAMB Has Curbed Malpractices by Merging CBT Centres

• 1,731,039 candidates set for exams May 13

Senator Iroegbu and Kuni Tyessi in Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) ‎has succeeded in checkmating the incessant tide of exam malpractice by merging Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres within and outside the country even as candidates prepare for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) on Saturday, May 13  2017.

This is even as a total of 1,731,039 candidates have registered for the ‎exams out of 1,736,571 who had bought the forms, thereby giving the sum of 5,540 candidates who have voluntarily decided to opt out of the exercise.

This was disclosed yesterday by the CEO/Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, when he briefed journalists  at the board’s head office about its preparedness for the coming examinations.
Oloyede who disclosed that the exams would hold simultaneously in 624 examination centres in Nigeria ‎and would have not less than 10 invigilators against the usual three, will have a total of 321 visually impaired candidates for the 2017 examination, pledging that adequate arrangements have been provided.

The board’s helmsman also stated that it has widened its vending ‎banks from four to ten and has also brought on board, Interswitch, Remita and NIPOST. To this end, he advised candidates to be fully prepared in order to avoid any form of embarrassment.
He said they are required to come to the centres with their e-registration slips only and are not allowed to come into the halls with calculators, phones, and other electronic devices.

According to him, candidates will be allowed to take the writing materials away at the end of the exams and will be provided with scratch sheets in the exam halls.
He said the candidates are also expected to provide such information as registration number, exam number and signature on the scratch sheets.
He said: “Candidates have been saying that they are often not sent to places where they wish to write their exams. This is not true. In curbing multiple registration and in check-mating fraudsters who tell them where they will be sent to, we have decided to merge the CBT centres.

“We have increased the capacity of our test centres to 250 (with only a few in categories B and C having the sitting capacity of over 200 and 100 respectively. This will make effective documentation and monitoring easier. We have also increased our CBT centres to 624 from the previous 524.”

“We have created 691,000 registration points instead of the previous 1000. This means that we have developed a system that would allow 619,000 candidates to register in 10 minutes with free access code granted to 100 points of registration‎ at each center even if our plan wwas to register 50,000 candidates per day.”

‎Oloyode noted that the exam, which is expected to end on May 20th, 2017, would have a supervisor, a technical officer, verification officer three proctors as well as security agents.
He said: “Each state will be superintended over by a head of a tertiary institution such as a vice chancellor, rector or provost who co-ordinates the supervisors under his/her jurisdiction.”