Yemi Obafemi
The Joint Admission Matriculation Board, has informed registered candidates that missed this year 2024 UTME due to their personal recklessness to forget about the exam as the body we not reorganised it.
The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, made the disclosure to newsmen shortly after monitoring the exam at the Kaduna State University CBT Centre, Kaduna, on Wednesday.
He said JAMB cannot spend tens of millions of the nation’s resources to reorganise a session for a few candidates who missed the exams due to their personal recklessness.
“Most of those candidates who missed the UTME are students from hostels who were made to register through schools because of the money the schools want to collect from the parents in the name of JAMB.
“They would now put 30 students in one bus. They will now be dropping them off in different locations. By the time they get to the last student’s centre, he is already late for the exam.
“You will now see the principal writing to me. What business do I have with a school?”, he asked.
Oloyede also revealed a father and his son, were arrested for their alleged involvement in impersonation during the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
Hiding the identity of the two suspect, Oloyede said: “For those who engage in cheating, they should know that it does not pay.
“The technology is helping us to check that.
“Across the country, most of the problem we have is impersonation. For instance, now, we say we have NIN, we now have cases of people with two NINs and therefore that has defeated the purpose of identity verification.
“We are going to take that up with NIMC that there are people who have two NINs.
“We have a case of a father impersonating his son, writing an examination for the son and I wonder, are you not destroying your son’s future?
“Of course, two of them are now in custody. I can’t understand what the father will now tell his son when they are both locked up in the same cell.
“This happened definitely not in Kaduna, but I don’t want to disclose the state.
“So, it is largely cases of impersonation, but we are ahead of them; we are just picking them up like chicken now because the facilities are there for us to see what they are doing and to pick them up.”
Speaking on the improved technology that made the exercise smoother and faster, Oloyede said, “Today, I have seen something which we need to improve on, but most importantly, we have done so many things in the background to make the exercise faster, more efficient and better. We have increased the level of automation.
“This year, 1.94 million candidates are writing UTME. By the end of today, we would have less than 100,000 remaining.
“By the end of today, what will be remaining will be Lagos, Makurdi and other few places in the country,” he added.
Oloyede also commended parents for their behaviour during the conduct of the 2024 UTME exercise.
He said, “There is no report this year of parents intruding, except in one state. In that state, they felt that since the first session failed, their children should not continue with the second or other sessions.”
