By Deborah Onatunde
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has disclosed why it will keep conducting examinations in spite of the industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The Registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, said the strike cannot hinder the smooth running of another batch of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
He said this on Saturday in Lagos, while keeping track of the mop-up exam, majorly organized for candidates whose centers were allegedly involved in malpractice and candidates with biometric errors during the general examination for this year in May.
About 1.7 million candidates sat for the examination nationwide while no fewer than 42,000 candidates from the number sat the mop-up exam across 10 centres (outside their original centres) in about five states of the federation: Abia, Anambra, Delta, Edo and Lagos.
Fielding questions from journalists, Oloyede cited the fact that more than half of private institutions and public schools are not on strike as reasons for the decision to proceed with JAMB.
“I can mention some of them. I know of Osun State University, Lagos State University, Kwara State University, Police University, Army School, School of Defence, and several others.
“And the reason for that is simple. Many of them are not on State’s Government Subvention and so their lecturers’ salaries are paid from the school fees.
“Aside from that more than half of all private universities are in session, some public Universities, particularly most state universities are not on strike.”
However, he said, except a University refutes a whole session on its own, the UTME results of their candidates irrespective of years remain useful until the beginning of a new session.
“So to us in JAMB, there is nothing like backlog of results as some people erroneously believe.”
Oloyede spoke on the successful running of the exam across the centers except for about four to five candidates, who had biometric problems and have all been allowed to sit for the exam again but that their results would not be released until their bio are verified.
Candidates arrived late at their center, giving countless excuses such as mistaking the WAEC testing center for the WAEC International Office for theira lateness, while some laud claim to the malfunctioning of the computer.
JAMB was applauded for reorganising the mop-up exam for them, stating they slightly lost all hope since their results were canceled with no feedback on what was next after the May exam.