The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Ishaq Oloyede, has said the examination body deliberately posted candidates for the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) far from their chosen examination towns.
Oloyede, who disclosed this on Sunday while taking part in an online briefing of concerned stakeholders, said the decision was part of efforts to curb examination malpractice.
Some parents had complained that they were surprised to note that their children were posted to computer-based test centres far from the communities they chose to sit the examination.
Responding, Oloyede said the new examination towns have been expanded beyond what they used to represent.
“Based on our past experience, we realised that the narrower the examination towns are, the easier it was for those who register candidates in teams and prearrange their centre allocation.
“So what we did is to expand the centres by grouping states like Lagos into just between six and seven examination towns. If you had chosen Sagamu, it does not mean that you would sit the examination in Sagamu because the examination town extend to places like Akute, Ajuwon, among others. It is also to discourage malpractice.”
The registrar also assured the public of upgrading of technologies being employed in the ongoing examination towards forestalling any form of malfunction.
He also advised candidates whose fingerprints could not be captured by the biometric verification machine not to panic, saying adequate provisions had been made to ensure fair treatment for all.
He, however, said they would not be able to sit the examination on their scheduled dates for not being screened.
The 2020 UTME examination started across the country on Saturday and is billed to end in the first Saturday in April.
“By Thursday, more 90 per cent of candidates would have successfully sat the examination. But the other candidates being handled by the equal opportunity group such as blind candidates would still be writing,” Oloyede said.
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