UTME: JAMB rolls out fresh guidelines for candidates
By Uji Avdullahi Iliyasu
Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it has rolled out fresh guidelines for future examinations.
This was contained in a statement made available to Blueorint Monday by JAMB’s Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin.
“In a bid to ensure seamless conduct of future operational process, including the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation examination (UTME), accreditation of centres, registration of
candidates, examination processes, results
management and general administration, the
Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has gone all out to strengthen its
operations
within these core areas, just as it rolled out
fresh operatiinal guidelines
and modifications to its technical services,” Dr Benjamin said.
The new develooments
were made known
by
the Board in a communiqué issued at the end
of a five-day brainstorming Retreat held in
Abuja recently.
The communiqué reads, “It became
necessary for the Board to modify its
operations towards achieving far reaching improvements on various
issues emanating from the registration
process, biometric challenges, and other
operational procedures.
Hence, no new Computer-Based Test
(CBT) centre would be accredited without
meeting the new requirements.
“To this
end, new CBT centres must use laptop
computer systems as clients zero thin clients or Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
would no longer be accepted.”
The communiqué further reiterated that
no CBT centre must install any clients with
less than 2 gigabyte (2GB) RAM. “It is now
mandatory that Autobot system should
be used for the accreditation of CBT
centres; there should be three (3)
Autobot tests: Pre-accreditation, During
Mock- UTME and , the dummy
examination, which is held a day before
the UTME to confirm the readiness of the
centre.
“Another key reason for the
decision was the need to prevent IP
address duplication and abuse.”
The Retreat also mandated the Board to
widen the scope of accredited CBT
centres as each of them would now have
two additional registration outlets within
their State of operation.
In his remarks at the Retreat, th
Registrar, JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede,
warned that cybercafes and tutorial
centres had been prohibited from
participating in any of the Board’s
exercises as such no CBT centre would be
allowed to collaborate with them, adding
that any violation of the directive,
whether in part or whole, would lead to
the revocation of the licence of the erring
CBT centre.
Furthermore, the Registrar stated that
biometrics of all accredited CBT centres
registration officers would be captured
ahead of the exercise. He explained that
the Board as a proactive agency must
move with the tide do as to stay ahead of
the machinations of cheats and
safeguard the integrity of the system.
On registration and biometrics, the
Retreat resolved that at the registration
point, candidates with bad fingerprints
would be scheduled for the examination
as “Exemption Candidates” and their
registration slips would be colour-coded
and visually different from those for
other candidates. He added that such
candidates would sit their examination in
Abuja on the last date of the national
examination calendar and their results
would not be released until after being
subjected to proper scrutiny.
Furthermore, as a requirement for
printing registration slips, a candidate
must use at least two fingers and any other two fingers taken would be used for
biometric verification prior to entering
the examination hall on the day of the
examination.