(JAMB) Registrar Prof. Ishaq Oloyede
yesterday said the much-awaited Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME)
will hold in May as part of steps to check
malpractices.
He also said the agency had handed over
10 officials to the police for investigation
in connection with fraud associated with
sales of scratch cards.
Prof. Oloyede said JAMB had eliminated
the use of scratch cards because UTME
candidates were being extorted.
He said: “For the 2017 UTME, we have
taken a decision to commence the sale of
the form soon. Within the next two weeks,
we will be out. The reason for this is that
we are making all arrangements that ought
to be made. We have changed the process
of payment, no more scratch card selling.
We need to put the right architecture in
place and we have put this in place.
“The examination will be coming up later
than usual. This is to make sure we take
into consideration the interest of the
students. We are going to conduct the
UTME in May. It will not clash with any
SSCE examinations
“I did not sit here or my management did
not fix the date. We sat down with all
examination bodies with their timetables
and we agreed to create this window.”
He said the new timing of the UTME was
to check any form of malpractice,
especially upgrading of results.
He said: “Normally, we conduct our
examinations around March and the results
will be ready within two to three days. But
when do we need the results? It is always
between July and August. This gives room
for all forms of suspicion. If you go on the
net, you will see people claiming that they
could help candidates to upgrade their
results because the results are lying fallow
between March and July.
“Now we want to shorten the period in
such a way that the time between the
examination and when the results will be
used will be very short. There will be no
opportunity for anybody to even dream of
upgrading results.
“We are also using that opportunity to
communicate with other Examination
bodies like WAEC, NECO and NABTEB to
ensure that we do not make our
examinations mutually exclusive.
Somebody is taking WAEC examinations,
he wants to take JAMB but in some cases
due to clash of timetable, he wants to
sacrifice one for the other.
“So, we have harmonized in such a way
that the period we are going to use for our
examination, all other examination bodies
will not have examinations during the
period.
Asked how many candidates will sit for
UTME this year, the Registrar said the
agency is expecting about 1.7million.
“That figure (1.7m candidates) was last
year’s figure and we do not expect less
this year. We expect about 1.5million
candidates for UTME and about 200,000
and 300,000 candidates for Direct Entry.
That was how we arrived at the figure and
that is the figure we are also expecting, “he
said.
“I or the management will not promise a
hitch-free examination because when you
are doing the type of re-engineering we are
doing, you cannot say that there will be no
hitches. But we believe that we are on top
of it and whatever problem arises, we will
solve it.
“Everybody will however have fair
treatment and everybody will be well-
treated. This is what I can assure
Nigerians.
Prof. Oloyede confirmed that 10 officials of
JAMB were handed over to the Police over
scratch cards-related fraud.
Oloyede went on: “What we have done is
to fine tune what is being done to make
our services better for the public. We have
taken some very painful decisions like
elimination of scratch cards. We know that
some people make their living from sale of
scratch cards but that is not the type of
living we want to encourage because it is
extortion.
“They buy the cards from our staff and
they sell at exorbitant price to the users.
The scratch card has a particular amount
of N1, 000 or N2, 500 but they up selling
the cards for four to five times the price.
Apart from that, scratch card has left to
massive corruption in the system.
“As I’m talking to you now, 10 members of
our staff are with the police. We have
handed over to the police for one corrupt
practice or the other related to scratch
cards.”
Culled from: THE NATION
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