Emmanuel Ukudolo
Abuja, Nigeria, February 21, 2016 – The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board(JAMB) has said it will not reopen the its portal for students interested in writing the 2016 exam, coming up February 27, 2016.
JAMB made the clarification in a statement by its Spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin in reaction to protest by students following closure of registration portal.
“The Board sincerely sympathizes with the plight of these prospective candidates and states that it’s the wish of the Board that Nigerian youth desirous of tertiary education are giving ample opportunity to register for its examination. This was why it began the sale of its application document last year August, that is about seven months ago.
“In the advertisement for the sale of the registration documents, the Board clearly stated that the sales would close by January, but due to public appeal it extended the registration process to February”, he said.
He said that closure of the portal was also to allow the board to prepare adequately for the examination slated for the end of February.
“The board cannot allow candidates to register perpetually. It has a time table and it adheres strictly to it to allow the tertiary institutions begin the process of admission early. We all must work to enshrine the culture of discipline in the system and ensure that tertiary institutions calendars.
“It’s most unfortunate that some candidates waited until our website was withdrawn before making attempts to register. This scenario looks very suspicious, for a candidate who is billed to sit for an examination slated for February to suddenly appear in the same February protesting his inability to register less than a week to the examination when he knew that the registration was too close in the same month”, he said.
He said the arrangement is not new to Nigerians as the Board’s process begins with the sales of application documents in August and ends early in the year of the examination adding that every aspiring candidate is expected to know as proper publicity involving the media was done,
He explained that through this same process over a million candidates have applied within this period and that the Board has made adequate preparation for them to sit for the 2016 exercise.
“However, it is common knowledge that one of the challenges of public examination in Nigeria is examination malpractice and one of the antics of the perpetrators of these acts is to force the Board into establishing a special center where late candidates will be bunched together to perpetrate exam malpractice.
“There are no special centres any more because they are being used as insecurity avenues. The Board is at the moment working tirelessly to conduct one of the best examination globally. It is no news that other international public examination bodies are already in Nigeria to understudy how we were able to get it right with CBT testing in Nigeria”, he said.
He said that the board does not post candidates to examination towns but that candidates chose the town of their choice.
