JAMB regrets technical hitches recorded at examination centres

The coordinator, JAMB National Head Quarters Annex, Lagos, Mrs Beatrice Okorie, has expressed her regrets over the technical hitches recorded in some centres in the state in the ongoing University Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).

Okorie told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos that such technical issues were most often not envisaged as they could happen anywhere and to anyone.

The coordinator, however, added that the board had since rectified the issues and stressed that no candidate participating in the ongoing UTME, would suffer any penalties as a result of such.

“We, indeed, regret the entire challenges because we mean well for the Nigerian-child.

“We, however, must realise that these facilities are machines and can breakdown without warning.

“Computers and generators are machines, just like cars.

“You can service your car today and take it out but on the way it can develop another fault.

“We actually went round for accreditation and a routine check of the various centres and their facilities before accreditation for the examination which commenced on February 27,’’ she said.

NAN reports that some candidates in some centres in Lagos during their examinations encountered technical challenges which led them to receiving incomplete questions from the server.

Some others complained of answers not being uploaded among options they were to choose from for the questions asked, while in some other centres the generating set, got burnt.

According to her, the board’s officials on discovering the challenges, moved swiftly to tackle them by ensuring that the candidates were awarded some marks and, subsequently, moved to other centres.

She added that the affected candidates were made to re-write the examination in order to ensure that no candidate suffered from a fault that was not of their making.

Okorie told NAN that no further complaint had been recorded in the centres across the state since after the problems were tackled frontally.

The coordinator said that the centres with such challenges had since been abandoned.

According to her, all candidates scheduled to take their UTME at centres JAMB had abandoned were notified and relocated to other centres.

She added that in the upcoming 2017 diet of the examination, there would be an improvement in the conduct of the examination on the Computer Based Test (CBT) platform.

NAN also reports that a total of 53 centres were used for the ongoing UTME on the CBT platform across Lagos State. (NAN)