As reactions continue to trail the recently conducted Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, the Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof. Is’haq Oloyode, has disclosed that a prominent parent close to those in the corridors of power in the country pleaded with him to reschedule the last examination for her daughter.
According to Oloyede, the parent, who called him on the phone, complained that her daughter encountered some technical problems during the last UTME Computer Based Test and as a result could not continue with the writing of the examination.
The JAMB registrar/CEO said this during an interview on Skype with the Nigerian Television Authority, stating that although the board was ready to reschedule the examination for the child, following the parent’s claim, it later discovered that the whole story was not true.
He said, ‘’We discovered that the student did not only attempt all the questions, but she performed very well. But because the mother called for the rescheduling of the examination, we now insist that it appears the child did not do the examination; the child must now come to do the examination. But the child is now disowning the mother, saying, ‘look I’m your client, not my mother. I didn’t tell my mother that I had any problem.’”
Reacting to the alleged widespread cheat ing during this year’s UTME CBT, despite measures taken by the board to checkmate the menace, the registrar decried the society’s lack of preparedness to combat examination malpractice.
He insisted that people talked about examination malpractice when they were not the beneficiaries, adding that the examination bodies alone could not fight the war against the menace because of the enormity of resources available to the syndicates perpetrating the crime.
‘’I’m not recruited by JAMB to come and do analyses of problems, to come and train students. I’m asked to examine. Therefore, whoever goes against the law, I’m going to punish, irrespective of status,’’Oloyode warned.
