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The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says arrangements have been concluded to have an interaction with owners of Computer Based Test (CBT) centres in the country ahead of the 2017 UTME.
The board’s Head, Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made the disclosure in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
According to the statement, the meeting which comes up on Tuesday at the University of Lagos is to fine tune all areas of challenges geared towards conducting a hitch-free examination in 2017.
It said that the meeting would determine the number of centres to be used for the 2017 all CBT Unified Tertiary Matriculation Board (UTME) exercise.
“These are centres that must have a minimum of 250 and above terminals (computers).
“We will not hesitate to disqualify any centre that falls short of the requirements,’’ the statement said.
“We will equally not compromise on the selection of these centres as they will fully be responsible for our registration and examinations and other related responsibilities that they will be saddled with from time to time as we introduce new measures.’’
It added that the board decided to come face to face with owners of these centre to ensure it got first hand information on the challenges they were faced with in the course of the examinations.
“As partners in progress, we need to sit down on a round table and tell each other the truth so as to get to the root of all the hiccups.
“We should all feel concerned even if it was just one centre that had challenges or hitches during the conduct of the last examination.
“Nigerians expect a lot from us and we must strive not to fail them.
“We are looking at strengthening what was done holistically to improve on the previous exercises,’’ the statement quoted the board’s Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede as saying.
It added that the board was committed to giving Nigerians globally accepted standard in the conduct of the examinations.
The statement said that the board would commence the sale of application forms soon and urged prospective candidates not to patronise any self-acclaimed agent as the board had not and would not appoint any.
It urged candidates to always visit the board’s website for information.
The statement noted that in a few months, the board had been working tirelessly on processes that were connected to the conduct of the examination.
It added that the board had taken stock of all the challenges that were recorded during the 2016 exercise, especially CBT centre-related issues.
It said the board had resolved to give every Nigerian child desirous of tertiary education a level playing ground to compete for the available space in these tertiary institutions.
“We are mindful of the fact that any child that writes in a dysfunctional centre is at disadvantage.
“All candidates must have same conditions, atmosphere and working facilities,’’ the statement said.