JAMB: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT 2018 UTME

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, called

an all-inclusive meeting of stakeholders at Abuja penultimate

Tuesday to fine tune, that is, dot the Is and cross the Ts in its

final road map to conducting a distinctive Unified Tertiary

Matriculation Examination, UTME,

JAMB UTME AND MOCK DATE

 it has scheduled for the

third month of 2018. The matriculation examination for this

year would run from March 9 to 17, 2018 while the warm-up

exercise – mock examination – would be conducted in the

first week of February.

JAMB HELD A MEETING WITH STAKEHOLDERS

Themed: Strategic Planning on Supervision and Evaluation of

the Conduct of the 2018 UTME, the high-powered

stakeholders’ meeting was held at the National Judicial

Institute, Abuja on January 9 and was the arrowhead of the

series of stakeholders’ meetings which kicked off on

November 6 last year. JAMB had on November 6 held

consultative meetings with mobile money operators; the

banks and mobile service operators and technical advisors

the following day and the November 8 meeting was held with

computer based test centre owners and technical advisors.

The build-up to the March UTME also included a stakeholders’

meeting with state commissioners for education, National

Assembly members, the Board’s chief external examiners and

other stakeholders last November 15.

JAMB REGISTRATION(PERIOD OF SALE)

The sale of application

and registration document scheduled to run from December

6, 2017 to February 6 this year is currently running.

The Board had to shift its mock examination designed to tone

up fresh candidates from January 22 to 24 to February in view

of an ongoing Non-Academic Staff Union’s, NASU, industrial

action in some tertiary institutions, an action that stalled the

accreditation of “the Computer Based Tests Centres” in

affected institutions.

JAMB ultimate push towards the March examination involved

the honing of the expanded monitoring groups at the Abuja

strategic meeting, which reviewed last year’s exercis

e and sensitized participants to the dangers to avoid and the

Board’s preparations for an integrity-ladden exercise. .

JAMB’s Registrar, Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede,

outlined the improvements on the existing infrastructure and

the strategic plan for the national task ahead saying: “Most of

the features of 2017 UTME are retained and in most cases

enhanced. But, in addition, some new elements are

introduced to address current realities.”

“To achieve effective communication from the Board to the

candidates, eliminate extortion of candidates by CBT centres

and cyber cafés with respect to (email) profile creation and

ease the process for candidates”, 

HOW TO CREATE A JAMB PROFILE

JAMB now “employs Short

Service Code on the four mobile operators’ networks with

candidate sending his or her name to 55019 on his/her unique

cellphone number and receiving a profile code (attached to

the phone number). 

HOW TO SUCCESDFULLY REGISTER FOR 2018 JAMB

The profile code will be maintained and

used in all subsequent activities, including procurement of

ePIN to purchase of application document”, Prof. Oloyede

explained.

JAMB has created more payment platforms and outlets this

year with “thousands of outlets across the country to procure

ePIN.” Giving some of the outlets as mobile money operators,

automated teller machines (ATMs), NIBSS supported USSD

payment platforms he explained that the new ones

complemented the 2017 partners such as banks, NIPOST,

Remita and Interswitch.

“In the course of monitoring the registration exercise, we have

discovered that a particular mobile service operator was

engaging in multiple charging candidates for failed service.

We have issued stern warning to Telcos to desist and ordered

the particular service provider to refund the excess charges to

the affected candidates. In the same vein, some banks were

manually writing the ePIN for candidates as against automatic

• delivery to the candidates’ unique numbers thus creating the

potentials for introducing unnecessary errors,” said the

Registrar, adding that the organisations involved risked being

blacklisted and disengaged if they failed to refrain.

The Board’s Registrar enthused that it had strengthened the

CBT centres with a view to eliminating ‘VIP’ rooms where high

bidders could cheat with ease, provision of toilet facilities and

automation of some elements and other facilities to remove

human errors. “A meeting has been scheduled ahead of the

mock examination to share accreditation results with the CBT

centres.”

Other innovation driven features for this year’s matriculation

examination include a “more robust and fortified Custom

Browser developed and deployed for accreditation exercise

thus phasing out the use of optionally used other generic

browsers.

“The 2018 UTME delivery software employs biometric

authentication of the technical officers to receive examination

on the delivery servers and activate it for the candidates. And

the examination cannot be activated ahead of the scheduled

time.” The policy on “no biometric authentication for

candidates, no participation in the examination stays, Oloyede

said with emphasis. The mouse driven computer system has

been phased out and replaced with 8-key system thus

eliminating the fears of mouse phobic candidates.

JAMB announced the prohibition of three more items – biros,

wrist watches and calculators – in this year’s UTME. This is in

addition to the prohibition of other devices that could store,

transmit or receive signals. The unique feature of the

prohibitions is that they extend to all the officials who would

be on duty at CBT centres nationwide as well.

The Board is also prepared to frontally tackle smart cheating

this time around. It convened a retreat late last year on the

identification of the various technology devices that aid

cheating and how to proactively contain them. The sum total

of the thorough preparations, said the Registrar, was to “build

a repository and archives of technology devices and methods

in use for examination practices to serve as reference and

build awareness, identify and profile all possible threats of

technology supported examination malpractice, develop

effective counter measures to detect, deter and prevent all

methods of cheating in the Board’s examinations.”

Prof. Oloyede revisited the extremes to which candidates and

some parents went to up their marks. He mentioned the

incidence of an examiner caught fondling with a female

candidate and was appropriately sanctioned. To the

amazement of all, the mother of the candidate sought the

conversion of the abuse to bonus marks for her girl. Another

offered to spend a night with a bewildered vice chancellor just

to railroad her daughter through the admission process.

The January 9 meeting broke into syndicate session at which

nine groups, chaired by a former JAMB Registrar, seven

professors and a retired Lt-General, brainstormed on the

modalities for effective monitoring of the March 9 – 17 UTME.

The monitoring groups comprise the civil society, general

monitors, high-powered/opinion leaders, NYSC directors and

equal opportunity. Others are youths of virtues, peace

monitors, Bwari (JAMB Headquarters) centre and chief

external examiners.

For Prof. Oloyede and his changed JAMB, the 2018 UTME is

an examination worth conducting. Consequently, and as the

saying goes, it is a job worth doing well, very well. ‘

JAMB has done its home work thoroughly and, other things

being equal, the conduct of this year’s UTME will outshine the

previous year’s and the credit would be due to the assiduity

of the Board’s team under the leadership of Prof. Oloyede,

with a profound ability to assemble the best brains in the

country to achieve set goals for the Board.