Registrar and chief executive, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Isha’q Oloyede, has disclosed that he has been able to uncover over 500,000 impersonators in the just concluded Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Oloyede who stated this yesterday, while speaking on LEADERSHIP Podcast’s live show, ‘Inside Nigeria,’ said the board has been able to achieve the height with the introduction of the National Identification Number (NIM).
said, “With the introduction of the NIM I expect that a number of sharp practices will be detected and will not be accommodated. So, because of that we are expecting that we will now be having correct result because last year for example we have over 2 million candidates who registered for the examination.” He added that this year they suggested to the federal government that NIM should be used and they had 1.4 million. He said that in order to be sure that some people are not shut out because of NIM the examination body went further to say that anybody who was interested in registering but was hindered by NIM should submit their names.
We gathered 34 to 40,000 or so. Even if you add the figure it is still not going to reach 1.5 million. At least 500,000 impersonators have been shut out. So we now go again, those who are examination takers, who take this exam for candidates, many of them, could not do so because of the linkage with NIM this year.
That is why we have many candidates who collapse in the examination hall because they were faced with reality. Before the exam, a group of people circulated questions and when we saw them, we didn’t refute that they were fake because anybody who believes in such deserves to be shocked. So we didn’t say anything because we looked at them and they were not our questions at any time,” he said.
The JAMB registrar also noted that there is nothing called pass or fail in the conduct of the examination as many perceive. He stressed that there has never been any registrar of the board who has disclosed any pass mark since the exam is not WAEC, NECO, nor an achievement test.
“It is ignorance that is making people talk about pass or fail. If somebody wants to read medicine today you have less than 25,000 spaces and candidates who applied are over 400,000 so you can even afford to say 300 is the cut off and you will still have enough but somebody who wants to read Hausa, Yoruba or Igbo, even if he scores zero he is coming in because those who applied are less than the available spaces.”
Speaking on the alleged mass failure by candidates in the conduct of the 2021 UTME, Oloyede said there are so many inaccuracies in such assertions. He said those who passed cannot in any way be made to be 50 percent not even to talk of 14 percent.
“So the figure that people are just parading they are not true. As far as I am concerned, I am very happy about the result because it was a true reflection of the situation,” he added.
He further said about 30 percent of candidates who claimed not to be able to register in the previous exam were discovered to be fake after consultation with NIMC. He said NIMC is looking for them to hand them over to the police for their infractions.
On his second tenure as JAMB registrar, Oloyede said he would continue to build on his five goals, which include, discipline, welfare, technology, transparency and networking. He stated that the board under his watch has been able to achieve at least three of the goals, while stressing that his coming back as JAMB head is a call to duty, promising that he would deliver his best.
About Author
