Those already selling JAMB forms are ‘419’ —JAMB registrar

The Registrar and Chief Executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, speaks with CLEMENT IDOKO on modalities being put in place to improve the conduct of the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), noting that though there may be hitches along the way,  things would be resolved in the interest of parents, candidates and the nation.

 

WHEN is JAMB beginning the sale of examination forms and what is responsible for the delay?

Well, I will say to you that I don’t know when. This is because all we want to do is to make sure those things that ought to be in place, are in place. I do not know exactly when it will be but, I know it will be soon. For instance, I would meet with heads of other examination bodies, because we don’t want a situation where the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is going on and the National Examination Council (NECO), among other examinations and students, are being put under pressure, especially thinking on how to surrender one for the other. That is one of the things we want to avoid.

The second one is that when we hold our examinations and students are not ready, you have a high rate of failure. You understand that our examination is not an achievement test but a ranking examination. That is why we always tell people that it is wrong to extend the validity of our result because the test itself is a once-and-for-all test. What happens to you in a day can determine whether you pass or fail. If somebody quarrels with somebody that day, it could affect his performance that day unlike the achievement test where there is an in-built mechanism for continuous assessment. They sit for three, four, five examinations and all the results are added together, but our own is to sit one day. If you are unfortunate to have headache or emotional problem on the examination day, that does it. So, we believe that we should work together with other examination bodies and make sure that we take as much as possible the interest of the candidates into consideration.

The other aspect is that we believe that certain things should be done. For example, we are doing Computer-Based Test, and I’m not aware of anywhere in the world where you do CBT without CCTV, because no matter how a man will monitor, the camera will still be more effective in capturing the activities of every candidate. Visit the British Embassy or anywhere such tests are conducted, one of the monitoring requirement is the Closed Circuit cameras as detective or preventive instrument, because if you are not caught now during the exams, you can be caught later after the exams, when the video is played back because the whole thing will be under coverage. And that is one instrument we have been asking from the Computer-Based Centres operators in the last two, three weeks; that we are not going to compromise. We are asking them to provide the CCTV cameras in the CBT centres. We know that this costs a lot of money, so we have to give them some time to be able to do that.

Thirdly, we have a technical problem that we are trying to solve. For instance, those who provide the recommended books that students read as compulsory reading, we want to make sure that the books are appropriate; we also want to be sure that the cost is proper. We equally want to be sure that we take for JAMB and for the Nigerian people, a percentage of what is sold. We have to work all that out. That is why we are taking our time to make sure that the right thing is done. We want to tell Nigerians that we have not commenced the sale of the forms and we do not intend to call any cyber cafe to sell the forms on our behalf. Those who are selling now are “419” and we have written to the security agencies to apprehend them and deal with them according to the law.

 

Considering the multiplicity of the CBT centres across the country, how many will be adequate and at what cost?

This depends on the size of a centre. There are centres where we need two and centres where we need three.  The coverage of an examination centre depends on the structure of the building: if it is L-shape, rectangular shape, roundish and so on. There are too many things that will determine the number of CCTV cameras needed. However, we are telling the CBT centre owners to provide for their centres.

 

There has been frictions, between universities and JAMB over admission policies because the institutions feel it is their right to admit students and not the other way round. How have you been able to manage that?

At the very beginning, there was no clash. What appeared like a clash was what came in-between. If you take note, you will understand that at the initial stage of JAMB, in fact the idea of JAMB was brought about by the vice chancellors of Nigerian universities, before colleges of education and polytechnics were brought in. Up till 2001 and 2003, all the chairmen of JAMB were serving vice chancellors. Go and check, you will see that whoever was the chairman of the Committee of Vice Chancellors also served as the chairman of the Board of JAMB. That was the relationship. After this time, things went wrong just like any other human endeavour; even sometimes, personal misunderstanding turned into something else.

All we are doing now is just to return to the original pleasant relationship. I have the privilege of having my colleagues in polytechnics, colleges and universities with whom we have been in relationship for over 40 years and they cannot just suddenly abandon me. Based on that relationship, we have tried to restore normalcy to the system. We are together now. You can see that most of our activities are carried out on the campuses of polytechnics, colleges of education and universities rather than in hotels. Surprisingly, in spite of the extra burden on them, they appreciate and like it. The reception has been marvellous that we do not need to spend our resources in hiring places to do one thing or the other. They have opened their gates to us and that is mutually advantageous to both parties.

What are the measures being put in place to correct the lapses witnessed in the conduct previous CBT examinations?

Frankly speaking, I do not expect that the next exams will be smooth and I’m not promising. There will be hitches here and there because of certain fine-tuning that we are doing. To maintain the status quo is a lot easier but if you want to do some changes and you believe that is the right way to go, there will be some hiccups. I’m not underestimating the capacity we have but, people may not like the direction we are going. However, once we know that, that is the direction we ought to go, once we convince all the stakeholders to go along with us, there will be no problems. I’m not saying that problems will not be there, because if you have been doing some things in a particular way and you believe they have not given you the desired result and you want to change, the change itself will bring some problems.

You can see even the nation, what is going on now. Because we want to effect a change, it will not come easy because people with vested interests will fight back and when they fight back, you don’t at that time say ‘I surrender because I didn’t expect it.’ For me, I expect some problems but, problems are meant for human beings. However, one thing is clear, and that is that we will give it our best shot and the intention will be clear and we will be consultative in taking decision.

We are not going to take decision simply because we believe we are convinced that is the right way to go; we must have the buy-in of other stakeholders. And that is why I’m saying that yes, we are not looking for a perfect examination, we expect problems to be there. But the problems will not be insurmountable and we will at the end of the day-all of us-will be convinced that we are doing the right thing and see the result of what we have done.