JAMB meets with CBT centre owners over 2017 exams

THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said arrangements have been concluded to have an interaction with owners of Computer Based Test (CBT) centres in the country ahead of the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).

The board’s Head, Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made the disclosure in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday, in Lagos.

According to the statement, the meeting which comes up today, at the University of Lagos, is to fine-tune all areas of challenges geared towards conducting a hitch-free examination in 2017.

It said the meeting would determine the number of centres to be used for the 2017 all CBT (UTME) exercise.

“These are centres that must have a minimum of 250 and above terminals (computers).

“We will not hesitate to disqualify any centre that falls short of the requirements,’’ the statement said.

“We will equally not compromise on the selection of these centres as they will fully be responsible for our registration and examinations and other related responsibilities that they will be saddled with from time to time as we introduce new measures.’’

It added that the board decided to come face to face with owners of the centres to ensure it got firsthand information on the challenges they were faced with in the course of the examinations.

“As partners in progress, we need to sit down on a roundtable and tell each other the truth so as to get to the root of all the hiccups.

“We should all feel concerned even if it was just one centre that had challenges or hitches during the conduct of the last examination.

“Nigerians expect a lot from us and we must strive not to fail them.

“We are looking at strengthening what was done holistically to improve on the previous exercises,’’ the statement quoted the board’s Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede as saying.

It added that the board was committed to giving Nigerians globally accepted standard in the conduct of the examinations.

The statement said that the board would commence the sale of application forms soon and urged prospective candidates not to patronise any self-acclaimed agent as the board had not and would not appoint any.

It urged candidates to always visit the board’s website for information.