The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) may be forced to suspend its 2016 computer-based tests following a call made by the federal House of Representatives asking the federal government to direct JAMB to suspend the 2016 computer-based Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) test.
The lawmakers reached the decision following their adoption of a motion brought under matters of urgent public importance by Hon. Oghene Egoh who said the step was necessary in order for JAMB to revert to the paper examination until the board was ready to conduct a hitch-free Computer Based Test (CBT).
Egoh said more than a million candidates who sat for the computer-based UTME experienced various degrees of technical hitches. The technical hitches, he said, jeopardised the candidates’ chances of gaining admission into the universities.
“Already serious admission problem is rocking the nation because already JAMB receives huge allocation from Federal Government every year,” he said. “Yet they charge candidates all manner of fees and majority of the children do not gain admission either because of the technical hitches of the CBT or the post UTME introduced by various tertiary institutions.”
According to Egoh, while some candidates are getting conflicting scores in the ongoing exercise, others are complaining of malfunctioning computers.
“There were instances of double-option answers, computers were malfunctioning and suddenly shut down causing absurdity that place some candidates in disadvantaged position,” he added.
Also commenting, Aishatu Dukku noted that JAMB was not ready for the computer based option. She suggested that JAMB should make it optional for students to choose whether to sit for computer-based test or use pen and paper instead.
