The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has criticised the extortion of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidates by some private secondary schools.
Oloyede, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Monday, claimed that these private schools mismanage the data of candidates as every candidate is intended to register individually with his or her own phone.
“What we are calling on the candidates to do is that they should go to the centre and register. But one very important thing that we are facing now with students either with disabilities or without disability is that UTME is not a school-based examination.
“There are private secondary schools who are extorting the candidates, they will take 10,000, 20,000 and they say JAMB form whereas they pay just 6,000 or 7,000 as the case may be. They are mismanaging the data of the candidates,” Oloyede said.
“Every candidate is supposed to register with his or her own phone but these people are mixing their data together.
“Even one institution, Federal Government College Bwari wrote to us, ‘Can you give them (people with disabilities) special registration?’ It is not possible, we are not school-based. We register individual candidates who are going into the university, we are not registering cohorts.”
Last year, JAMB announced the creation of 11 UTME centre specially for Persons With Disabilities.
The JAMB Registrar explained that the main reason behind creation of centres for PWDs was to provide equal opportunity for all candidates writing the UTME.
He said JAMB identified the need for special attention for persons with disabilities and decided to create the centres with the help of some individuals and organisations.
“The idea is that those who are suffering from physical disabilities require support. We find out that they need special attention and this special attention cannot be easily available in 774 centres across the country.
“So, what we therefore did was to create centres that are as close as possible to where they are coming from. We know that that is even a strain on them but in order to provide equal opportunity for them, what we have also done is to provide wherewithal for them and their guide to the centre and we created this centres across the country so that the closer they are to the place of abode of these candidates the better,” Oloyede said.
Oloyede confirmed that the registration for the 2024 UTME started last week and will be closing in the next four weeks.