Kuni Tyessi in Abuja
As the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) enters day 2, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator Mohammed Dandutse, has pledged that the challenges faced in the course of sitting for the exams will be resolved.
This came on the heels of complaints by dissatisfied parents and candidates whose examinations were disrupted at the Good Success Computer Based Test (CBT) Centre in Utako.
He said: “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, 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 centres 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.”
On his part, Public Communication Advisor of JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, in responding to questions raised by the parents and candidates, maintained that the glitches were to be 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 1,000 centres 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 centre 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.
According to Benjamin, “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 centre 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 centre 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 centres. 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 centres that have failed.”
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