JAMB Warns Parents, Guardians against Fake Vendors

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has cautioned parents, guardians and candidates against patronising people he described as fake vendors of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) forms, saying that the board is yet to start the sale of form and has not authorised any operator of cyber cafe to sell the forms on its behalf.

He disclosed that those defrauding members of the public with the sale of fake UTME forms have been reported to security agencies who have been instructed to arrest and treat them accordingly.

“I can say clearly that I don’t know when we are going to start the sale of forms. All we want to do is to make sure that things that ought to be in place are in place. I cannot tell you exactly when it would be but I know that it would be sooner than later. Why am I saying so? For instance, we are meeting with heads of other examination bodies.

“We don’t want a situation where WAEC is going on, NECO is going on and the other is going on and students have to be put under pressure to surrender one. That is one of the things we want to avoid.

“The second one is that when we hold our examination at a time when students are not ready you have high rate of failure and our examination is not an achievement examination, it is a ranking examination. That is why we are saying it is not good to extend the validity because the test is a once and for all test.”

Oloyede added: “What happens to you in a day can determine whether you pass or fail. If someone quarrels with someone else that day, that can affect his performance unlike achievement test where there are inbuilt mechanisms for continuous assessment. We want to work with other examination bodies to ensure that the interest of students is protected.

“We believe that certain things should be done. For example we are doing computer-based test (CBT), I am not aware of anywhere in the world where you do CBT without CCTV because even if you are not caught during the exam, you can be caught after the exam because the whole thing would be under coverage.”