JAMB assures readiness to conduct mock exams‎

 

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said arrangements have been concluded for interested candidates to write the mock examination of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), this Saturday, April 29.

The registrar of JAMB, Is’haq Oloyede, made this known Wednesday in Abuja, during a training session organised to equip JAMB staff and external resource persons drawn from across the country, on the technical know-how of the computer-based test ahead of the mock UTME and UTME, respectively.

According to Oloyede, the failure of the board to conduct the mock test as earlier scheduled, which was an unexpected glitch on the part of one of the partners, would no longer surface as the board had put alternative measures in place to ensure a successful mock UTME across all CBT centres in the country.

“We have gone back to the drawing board because we didn’t expect a failure from one of our partners. What we have done is to create some other redundancies that if this one fails we will be able to come up with this.

“We believe that come next Saturday, we will do our best. What we have done now is that last Monday we conducted a preliminary mock in ten places across the country and it was 99 percent successful. We conducted it in Sokoto, Abuja, Lagos, Ilorin, Nasarawa, Lokoja and we tested the technology again it was working. But it worked because of the cooperation of all,” he said.

The registrar disclosed that the board is in partnership with two service providers, MTN and Airtel, to ensure a hitch free conduct of the examination. He however, expressed displeasure over the network failure of MTN service during the preliminary trial testing in Bwari, Abuja.

“In Bwari, the day we were to do the trial testing, between 12 o clock and 4 pm, there was no MTN anywhere in Bwari. We had to switch over to Airtel to be able to conduct the examination. We have protested strongly to MTN and we hope that MTN will not allow such again. They told us the network was down in all of Bwari; the generator, battery and backup were down from 12pm to 4pm.

“Although it sounded strange, but because we anticipated such we were able to switch to Airtel and we were able to conduct a successful preliminary testing. We hope that it will not happen again. I was not appointed to give excuses but to deliver and that is why I promise I will do my best hoping that every other party will play their part,” Oloyede said.

While stressing that the mock UTME is free, the JAMB boss disclosed that all JAMB related examinations could be written anywhere in the country with mobile phones especially in the rural areas, in cases where there are no computers or the candidates are not computer literates.