The predicament of UTME candidates

ON Saturday, April 8, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) suspended its scheduled mock examination, leaving thousands of candidates who reported at the examination centres across the country stranded. Because only 600,000 candidates had been able to register for the examination nationwide two weeks into the one-month period initially scheduled for registration, it extended registration for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) by two weeks. It also postponed the UTME earlier scheduled to start on Saturday, May 6, saying it would now be held between May 13 and May 20.  Announcing the new developments, JAMB’s Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, cited logistic problems.

Indeed, since the Board commenced the sale of the 2017 UTME forms in March, it has been a tale of woes, anguish and despair for the prospective candidates who have had to put up with the inhuman conditions created by the Board in its bid to reform the registration and examination systems. Two weeks after the commencement of registration, applicants who had to put up with the grossly inadequate registration centres, laborious process of bank payments and internet failures were already expressing anguish.  Those intending to obtain the UTME forms often had to wait for as long as six hours to do so, and for more than four days in the  bank to obtain their PIN  after  paying for the forms. As many a bank  officer  lamented the inability to connect to the JAMB website, the applicants sighed. Suddenly, registering for the UTME had become a bitter struggle.

Worse still, the candidates had to endure nightmarish experiences at the Computer Based Test (CBT) registration centres domiciled in the capital cities of the respective states. The experience has been particularly nasty for candidates living in areas that are very far from the state capitals. The centres, despite charging the candidates handsomely for their services, have been unable to ease the processes of creating an e-mail for each candidate, creating his or her profile, generating the PIN, and then proceeding to register him or her. On April 3, two female candidates waiting to register for the examination reportedly slumped at the entrance of JAMB’s Niger State zonal office in Minna. They were struggling to obtain the registration forms handed out through iron barricades by officials of the board.

In his reaction to the developments,  Professor Oloyede said most of the problems associated with the UTME registration process were self-imposed. He pointed out that while the 650 CBT centres in the country could easily carry out the registration exercise, nearly all candidates insisted on going to the JAMB centres which were only 36 in number. Worse still, while all the registered centres had about 100 computers each and could conveniently register 100 candidates simultaneously, they resorted to using “one or two computers.” The delay by the banks in assigning registration PIN to candidates, he added, was due to their failure to follow instructions. The banks were instructed to create profiles for the candidates but they had not done so. “Rather than creating the profiles, they are conniving with some centres and sending candidates to them,” the JAMB boss lamented.

To say the least, we are appalled by the justifications proffered for JAMB’s failure, both by itself and by some members of the public. The failed mock examination was paid for by the affected candidates, but JAMB made no provisions for a refund of their money. Thus, if it has failed the candidates at this time and got away with it, what stops it from doing the same thing in future? The financial cost of the failure to conduct the mock exam should never have been borne by the candidates. Indeed, part of the lessons JAMB should have been made to learn is that failure has huge financial implications. Having failed to execute its own part of the contractual agreement with the affected candidates, it should make arrangements to refund their money without delay.

Besides, it is troubling that an examining body of JAMB’s standing could engage in puerile rationalizations of a glaring failure to conduct a smooth registration process. It is illogical to claim that most candidates simply preferred to  invade the 36 JAMB offices in the country instead of using the 650 CBT centres, while at the same time admitting that most of the centres used only two computers instead of 100. The truth is that, whether at the CBT centres or JAMB offices, the registration process has been an utter mess. Candidates would not have had to visit JAMB offices in huge numbers if the CBT centres had been up and doing, and if JAMB had properly guided them. The registration process has subjected candidates to untold misery, and it can only be hoped that the main examination does not suffer a similar fate.

We call on JAMB to set up mechanisms to ensure that the banks and CBT centres conform to the terms earlier agreed with it. This is particularly important because it cannot go back to manual registration at this stage. Since it was not forced to adopt the CBT system, it must ensure that it works to the satisfaction of its candidates, their parents and, by implication, the entire country. Treating the nation to  a salad of half truths and illogicalities is necessarily a futile exercise.