Professor Ishaq Oloyede, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, has said that all Computer Based Centres approved for the conduct of this year Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination must have Closed Circuit Cameras (CCTV) installed as part of measures to prevent examination malpractice.
According to Ceoafrica, the JAMB registrar made the statement yesterday, when a delegation of the Education Correspondents Association of Nigeria, Abuja Chapter, (ECAN) led by its Chairman, Mr Chuks Ukwuatu, paid him a courtesy visit.
Oloyede said that “henceforth, all Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidates would sit for their examinations under strict supervision and surveillance of CCTV in line with the global trend and that the policy which is expected to kick off this year would not be compromised”.
According to him, “the measure has become imperative to further strengthen the quality of the examination and eliminate examination malpractices that have characterised the conduct of public examinations in Nigeria”.
He added that there was nowhere in the world where Computer Based Test (CBT) is conducted without CCTV, warning that operators of the CBT centres who do not comply with the installation of CCTV cameras prior to the examination might not be accredited for the conduct of the examination.
He, however, cautioned parents, guardians and candidates against patronising those he described as fake vendors of UTME forms stressing that the Board has not started the sales of the forms and has not authorised any operator of Cyber Cafe to sell the forms on its behalf.
Oloyede, said security agencies have been alerted on the nefarious activities of those defrauding members of the public with the sales of fake UTME forms adding that they have been instructed to arrest and treat them accordingly.
He said: “I can say clearly that I don’t know when we are going to start the sales of forms. All we want to do is to make sure that things that ought to be in place are in place . I cannot tell you exactly when it would be but I know that it would be sooner than later.
“Why am I saying so? For instance, we are meeting with heads of other examination bodies. We don’t want a situation where West African Examination Council (WAEC) is going on, National Examinations Council (NECO) is going on and the other is going on and students have to be put under pressure to surrender one. That is one of the things we want to avoid.
“The second one is that when we hold our examination at a time when students are not ready you have high rate of failure. And our examination is not an achievement examination, it is a ranking examination. That’s why we are saying it is not to extend the validity because the test is a once and for all test.
“What happens to you in a day can determine whether you pass or fail. If someone quarrels with someone else that day, that can affect his performance. Unlike achievement test where there are inbuilt mechanism for continuous assessment. We want to work with other examination bodies to ensure that the interest of students is protected.
“We believe that certain things should be done. For example we are doing computer based test, I’m not aware of anywhere in the world where you do computer based test without CCTV because even if you are not caught during the exam, you can be caught after the exam because the whole thing would be under coverage.
“And that is the one instrument in the last three weeks that we have been telling CBT operators that we are not going to compromise that,” he said.
