The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) concluded the 2022 edition of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in the penultimate week with some of the perennial hitches trailing the exercise.
Not a few observers, however, opined that the examination board was making appreciable progress and expressed optimism that the innovations deployed by the board, if sustained and further improved upon, would yield the much desired result of having an examination body every Nigerian would be proud of.
Power failure at examination centres, hitches in biometric capturing and network glitches are some of the challenges reported by some candidates who sat for the examination which began on Friday May 6 and ran through Saturday, May 14. Reports from across the country claimed that some candidates had their examination delayed for hours before they could sit for it while some had to wait for days before their examinations were rescheduled.
A parent, Mr Taofeeq Abdullahi, whose daughter sat for the examination in Osun State told Sunday Sun that he was shocked to receive the report that his daughter who was billed to write her examination on Saturday, May 8, could not sit owing to technical issues.
According to him, “I called her guardian to find out how my daughter’s examination went, but I was shocked to hear that she returned home without writing her papers because the centre where she was to undergo the exercise had some technical problems.”
Mr Abdullahi said that the news put him on the edge for days especially when an unconfirmed report claimed that the examination body had repeatedly said it would not reschedule the examination for any candidate who failed to sit for his or her papers as scheduled.
“I just like my daughter was troubled by the development and I tried to call somebody whom I thought could be of help, but without any success until I was told that the examination was later rescheduled. My daughter finally wrote the examination on Tuesday and scored 227 when the result was released,” he said.
Abdullahi who was obviously disappointed by his daughter’s performance said that the anxiety and the uncertainty that trailed the rescheduled examination played a huge role in his daughter’s performance at the end of the day.
A similar development played out in Nasarawa State where some candidates and their parents at Mas Global Resources CBT Centre lamented the disruption of the examination by system failure.
A woman, Mrs Christiana Onje, who said she accompanied her niece to the centre said the candidate could not complete the exercise as her computer system shut down repeatedly while the exercise lasted.
“It was very disturbing to experience such disappointment during an examination one had prepared for over a year. My niece really prepared for the examination, but look at how everything has ended now. She said the systems were just going off and on, wasting her time and preventing her from really focusing on the examination. JAMB should have found a permanent solution to the problems that continue to plague the examination year in and year out,” she admonished.
Similar hitches also reportedly dogged the exercise in Lagos, Delta, Ondo and Ogun states where some frustrated parents and candidates were said to have threatened to raze the CBT centre at Mountain Top University in Abeokuta, the state capital, as technical hitches prevented the second batch of students scheduled to write the examination on the first day of the exercise.
Reports from the centre claimed that while the first batch of candidates posted to the centre for the examination had the exercise delayed and prolonged, those scheduled to sit for the second batch could not write the examination over what a source described as network failure.
But despite the hitches and disappointments experienced in some centres, findings by Sunday Sun showed that the examination recorded appreciable level of success compared to previous years.
Some candidates and parents who spoke with Sunday Sun on the conduct of this year’s UTME are of the opinion that the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board had a much improved outing at the end of the just concluded examination.
A candidate who sat for the exercise at Command Secondary School, Ipaja, Lagos, Ameerat Luqman told Sunday Sun that she found the exam seamless despite her initial apprehension.
The candidate, who said that she had nursed some fears before going for the examination, disclosed that she was happy that the examination went fine during her session.
“Before my turn last week I had heard a lot of reports about candidates who were unable to sit for the examination due to one issue or the other and that made me really fearful to the extent that I could not read any longer but at the end of the day the examination went fine without any hitches,” she said.
Speaking in the same vein, another parent, Mr Emmanuel Etuk who accompanied his son to his centre in Lagos also commended the conduct of the 2022 UTME, but pointed out that there was still room for improvement.
I will score JAMB high with what I saw the day my son wrote his exam. Although there were unimpressive reports from some centres especially in the first two to three days when the examination started, but with what I saw when my son wrote his last Wednesday, I think there was a lot of improvement,” he said, adding however, “that does not mean that JAMB cannot do better.”
An educationist, Mr Babatunde Oseni, in his own assessment, said that the performance of the examination body at the just concluded UTME was an indication that JAMB was relentless in improving on its previous performance. Mr Oseni who runs a tutorial centre in Lagos said reports from the majority of students, who sat for the examination from his tutorial centre, indicated that the exercise went smoothly in most centres where his students took the examination.
His words: “Honestly, I am excited by the reports I have received so far from the majority of my students who sat for the examination. So far, the only issue that has been reported by my students was that a few of them had their examinations delayed for some minutes or at most an hour except a boy who reported that his system tripped off due to little spark from the extension which his system was connected to. But everything was resolved within few minutes.”
One area Mr Oseni would like to see more improvement is the registration for the examination.
He pointed out that JAMB, in an attempt to make the examination impregnable to exam cheats and unscrupulous elements, had come up with a very complex and cumbersome registration process, which he pointed out needed to be reviewed.
Registration for the examination begins with the prospective candidates having to generate profile codes which cost N50.
A prospective candidate who succeeds at the stage then proceeds to log on to JAMB portal to fill the application forms, and then proceed to making payment , before going for biometric capturing.
But there were reports of intending candidates who could not generate their profile codes for several days and continued to lose money each time they tried.
Some frustrated candidates, it was gathered, ended up seeking help from people who took advantage of their helplessness while some other candidates have their confidential information compromised by those they ran to for help.
Mr Oseni, therefore, urged the examination body to look into the registration process, which he said should be reviewed and made less cumbersome in the interest of the candidates
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