The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has clarified that the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) registration and examination exercises are not school-based.
According to a statement by the Board’s Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, it said the clarification became necessary after the Board’s attention was drawn to the unholy intrusion of the authorities of some elite schools, who confisticate the registration SIMs of their students.
“The Board, therefore, wishes to state clearly that unlike the West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO), etc., the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) Registration and Examination exercises are not school-based. As such, schools have no role whatsoever to play in these operational processes of the Board. This is because these exercises require only the participation and engagement of individual candidates.
“It should be recalled that the Board had repeatedly warned authorities of elite schools to stop intruding into the operations of the Board so as not to negatively impact the future of their UTME candidates,” it said.
According to reports, some elite schools are fond of hoarding the network SIM cards of UTME candidates in their schools, denying them access to their email addresses, their profile codes and as such, depriving them of the opportunity of receiving vital information from the Board.
The statement added that it was also discovered in the ongoing examination that these schools also warehoused their candidates’ examination notification slips leading to many of these candidates missing their examinations owing to their inability to access their slips to know their exact examination schedules.
“It is, however, regrettable that some of these candidates after missing their examination placed the blame on the Board whereas much of the information that the candidates needed had been sent to these SIMs which were being held by their schools,” it stated.
The Board reiterated that it will not accept any responsibility for the inability of these candidates to turn up on their scheduled examination dates.
It said this information became necessary following the series of complaints by candidates that their notification slips were only handed to them on the examination day by their schools and as such could not leave early enough to meet their examination schedules or that their SIMs are with their schools and so could not access the messages sent to them by the Board.
This is apart from the series of data mutilation occasioned by the unwholesome practice of group processing of UTME registration, among others.
This is evident in the various complaints sent to the Board from schools in Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Kano and others, reiterating the fact that the schools had through their intruding attitude, denied the candidates the opportunity to receive vital information.
The Board, while urging parents to note that the UTME is a personal examination and is not to be handed to their children’s schools to manage, maintained that the Board would not accept any blame for candidates missing their examinations as a result of not accessing vital information or centre location attributable to the unwelcome intervention of these schools.
