UTME: Candidate risks failure after avoiding biometric verification | EduCeleb
Abdussalam Amoo
12th April 2019
A candidate who sneaked into a Computer Based Centre in Ogun State is risking failure after he was caught not have gone through the biometric verification process, an official has said.
The candidate who is among the over 1.8 million writing the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) had allegedly avoided going through the mandatory verification but was able to write the exam at his centre, Life Baker College, Ijoko.
People at the centre said the boy whose name is not known had arrived earlier before others and had gone to hide in one of the examination halls.
EduCeleb.com recalls that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board had stated before the commencement of the UTME that biometric verification was compulsory for all candidates writing the exam.
It is a sort of way candidates get to “sign in” before and “sign out” after their exams.
Confirming the development, a JAMB official, Mrs Khadijah Musa suggested that the boy must have done it deliberately.
“He knew what he was doing when he decided not to sign in like his mates,” she said. “We asked all candidates to queue but he must have deliberately avoided the queue to do what he did.”
She said that out of the 246 candidates who sat for the first batch of the exam on Friday, 245 went through the biometric registration.
It was when he returned to sign out that the officials detected him not to have signed in.
Though she and other officials claimed that the examination started on schedule, findings by EduCeleb.com show that it started about one hour behind schedule.
The first paper was meant for 7am but it did not start until some fifteen minutes past 8, leaving the candidates to conclude it two hours after.
Some candidates also complained of some brief slow internet connection as they wrote their papers.
This reporter observed officials attempting to put off some electrical appliances in order to increase the voltage of power supply to the stuffy examination halls at the centre.
At other centres visited in Ifo and Ado-Odo Ota Local Government Areas of Ogun State and Alimosho Area of Lagos State, the conduct of the exam went on without similar hassles.