We will not condone sabotage of UTME, Oloyede

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has yesterday warned operators of the Computer Based Test (CBT) that any of them caught flouting the terms of their engagement would not be spared, but would be made to face the full wrath of the law.

An estimated 1.7 million candidates are expected to sit for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) scheduled to take place between May 16 and 20 nationwide.

JAMB Registrar, Prof Is’haq Oloyede, who gave this indication during his final meeting and briefing with CBT operators at the National Universities Commission (NUC), Abuja, also assured that cases of multiple registrations by candidates have been streamlined to curb cases of examination fraud.

Oloyede’ warning to CBT operators is coming against the backdrop of the recent elopement by a CBT operator in Okeke, Kogi State, during the April 29 mock trial examination, where over 250 candidates allocated to the centre were left stranded.He said: “The truth is that we are definitely going to sanction those of them who misbehave. At least, we need to caution them.

I will not go into the details of some of those things I mentioned to them, but the long and short of it is that we need to send some clear signals to some of them.

“We have put some measures in place to curb malpractices and we have also sent correct signals to the people and whoever is taught will be severely dealt with.”

As part of the measure to reduce malpractice, Oloyede said the Board had decided to tackle incidences of multiple registrations, adding: “Even the issue of carrying jottings into examination halls will be reduced if the examination is careful enough.

“We have tried our best to put in place strategies to make cheating in an examination unattractive. Whoever is caught doing what he or she is not expected to do, we will allow the full weight of the law to come down heavily on such a person.”