By Ngozi Nwankwo
As Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, commenced the conduct of 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, nationwide, it said it has successfully recorded a major engineering it aspired to for the past seven years.
The JAMB Registrar, Prof, Ishaq Oloyede who disclosed this said the breakthrough would pose threats on fraudsters’ involvement in UTME.
Oloyede said this while fielding questions from journalists shortly after monitoring the on-going 2024 UTME in Kogo Bwari on Friday.
He said, ” Today, examination is very important to us, because we have done some engineering we have been trying to do in the last seven years but we are only successful today. Those who are fraudsters are in trouble because they know we were able to do certain things we are aspiring to do and anyone who tries us we regret it.”
While commending the effort of the security personnel in reducing activities of fraudsters in the system, Oloyede said that those who were involved in frauds are already in their nets and would be dealt with.
” We are aware that many candidates gave their UTME details to some fraudsters but almost all the people who have been doing this (fraudulent activities) are already in their nets. I won’t want to mention the numbers, but I’m very happy to tell you that they are in the nets.
“We thank the Inspector-General of Police, Director-General of the State Secret Service,SSS, Director-General of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corp, and the Nigerian Police Force National CyberCrime Centre,NPF-NCC, they have been doing marvelously good,” said JAMB Registrar.
Oloyede, however, advised candidates who might experience and technical glitch or section failure to be patients and avoid disruption, adding JAMB headquarters has put mechanism that would reprogram their questions and reschedule them for the exam.
“It is important for us to note that when a section fails, they will have to step aside, the headquarters will be contacted and the earliest time they will be rescheduled will be after 4:30 so that section two and three can go. In some cases they can be rescheduled the following day if they had been section 4 in that center. The parents who get worried that they children were early should know that the exam is programmed and they have to reprogram another question for them from the headquarters. We are appealing to the members of the public to understand it that centers fail, yes, some centres fail. I have heard of only one throughout the country but I expect about 10% of centers to fail because we know level of development in the areas.when it happens so do not disrupt others let the section go on,” he said.
He commended the public, especially parents, for their smooth conduct, said parents usually cause problems for students in previous exercises.
“Everything appears to be going well. We want to thank the public for heeding our advice because it appears everybody is doing what they are expected to do,” he said.
The JAMB Registrar urged candidates to be upright, study well and avoid patronizing fake tutorial who he discribed as centres of corruption.
Meanwhile, one of the section one candidates, Aminu Abbullahi interviewed said there was no technical challenges and lauded JAMB for the smooth conduct of examination.
