Candidates, parents protest, demand cancellation of 2016 UTME

Hundreds of admission seekers to the nation's tertiary institutions
and their parents on Tuesday stormed the Lagos State Governor's Office
in Alausa, Ikeja, and the state Assembly complex to protest against
alleged manipulation of the 2016 Unified Tertiary Matriculation
Examination.
The protesters demanded the cancellation of the exams and the removal
of the Registrar of the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board, Prof.
Dibu Ojerinde.

The protesters, who faulted the conduct of the examination, described
the exercise as a "big sham."
The examination, conducted by JAMB, they alleged, was fraught with
irregularities.

The examination, which started on February 27, will end on March 19.
While some of the candidates alleged that the board deliberately
lowered their scores, some claimed that it arbitrarily awarded marks
to many candidates.

The protesters, led by a group under the aegis of Concerned Parents
and Education Stakeholders, displayed placards with inscriptions such
as, 'All we are saying give us our mark', 'Dibu must go; the only
stumbling block in education progress', 'The Joint Admission and
Manipulation Board, give us our real results', and 'The professor of
test and management has outlived his usefulness', among others.

The protesters, who occupied the gate of the Lagos State House of
Assembly complex for many hours, said JAMB and its registrar had "lost
focus on how to conduct a successful Computer-Based Test in the 21st
century.
A candidate, Maryam Animashaun, who expressed disappointment with the
conduct of the examination, claimed that she received three different
results from JAMB.

Animashaun, who sat for the examination at the College of Education,
Oro, Kwara State, said, "I am confused. I do not know what to do now.
The first alert I received on the telephone from the board with regard
to the examination showed that I scored 218. The second alert read
186, while the third one read 286.

"The surprising thing now is that I cannot print any of the results.
On the website, the board claimed that I did not sit for the
examination. Meanwhile, I sat for English, Government, Economics and
Literature-in-English."
Another candidate, Kalasuwe Adeola, who claimed she scored 220, said
she obtained the same score in 2015.

She said, "I am sure JAMB did not mark this year's UTME. If it did,
why did they issue me the same result I obtained last year? In my
printed result for this year, it was written 2015/2016 instead of
2016/2017. I sat for this year's examination at the Bachel Model
College, Lagos, on March 9. Unlike other candidates, I did not have
any issue with my system during the examination."

The National President of the Association of Tutorial Schools in
Nigeria, Mr. Shodunke Olutodotun, lamented that over 10,000 candidates
missed the UTME, while others had their marks deducted due to
irregularities by JAMB.

"This year's UTME will soon be concluded. We have a man called Prof.
Dibu Ojerinde. This man has outlived his usefulness in JAMB. He seems
to be more powerful than the country's president.

"The protesters are the victims; their destinies are being finished by
Dibu. Most of the protesters that had their exam in Delta State had
the exam in a shrine. A lot of them got results before they sat for
the exam.

"We are appealing to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and the Speaker,
Mudashiru Obasa, to send signal to Abuja to stop UTME. If they don't
do that, we will go to Abuja.

"How will someone sit for Physics, Chemistry, Biology and the next
thing he sees are Economics, Commerce and Government?"
Describing the exam as a fraud, a parent, Mr. Bunmi Elujula, urged the
Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to look into the complaints
of the candidates urgently.

Apart from awarding arbitrary scores to candidates, Elujula said many
candidates had problems with their systems.

He said, "Many candidates were allocated between 40 and 60 additional marks.

What are the criteria for this arbitrariness? The strange thing is
that JAMB started the CBT two years ago, why is this year's exam a big
flop? I have not seen candidates and parents complain this way about
the exam in the past. I plead with the authorities to look into their
grievances."

But JAMB described the organisers of the protest as "blackmailers".
In a statement by its Head of Public Relations, Dr Fabian Benajmin,
the board said some proprietors, whose examination centres did not
receive accreditation for the test, were behind the protest.

The statement read in part, "The board had approved centres provided
by these individuals to be used for the 2016 exercise. Unfortunately,
it could not approve those centres lacking in all the indices needed
for a successful CBT.

"These same proprietors turned around to organise candidates to
protest against our activities. We are not perfect as an organisation,
but we are working hard to ensure that Nigerian education is better
than it is. We have taken the risk to do the unthinkable so as to
change the paradigm.

"We will continue to call on Nigerians to give us the benefits of
doubt and with their collective support; we will give them one of the
best CBT globally. It is no news that the worst CBT is far better than
the best Paper and Pencil Test. At least, the era of candidates
pouring acid on JAMB officials, bolting with question papers into the
bush and all unthinkable embarrassing acts are gone."

PUNCH.