JAMB Warns Parents To Stay Away From UTME Centres,

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has asked the parents of candidates sitting the 2018 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination to stay away from Computer-Based Centres.

The JAMB Registrar, Prof Is-haq Oloyede, who said this on Monday in Abuja while monitoring the Mock UTME at the Kogo and Veritas University CBT centres, noted that some parents had formed the habit of hanging around the centres to engage in examination malpractice.

He said, “We urge parents to keep away from CBT centres. We are preparing people for university education, but the parents come around too often. They want their children or their wards to pass at all costs.

“This practice is not helpful because they will not follow these candidates to the lecture rooms. Lecturers and others will start taking undue advantage of such parents because they are not mature. They are not prepared for the task. I think parents should steer clear of all CBT centres and allow the children to grow.”

Oloyede urged the UTME candidates to desist from cheating during the examination, as the board would monitor all the computers to be used.

He said that all electronic devices, such as phones, headsets, flash drives and other items, such as wristwatches and calculators, remained banned.

Noting that the ban on special eyeglasses and pens also applied to supervisors and examiners, the registrar said, “We urge the candidates to avoid any form of malpractice or shortcut to passing the examination. You are aware that we have banned some items from going into the examination halls; we have banned special glasses, wristwatches and many other things that we are aware our candidates use for illicit activities.

“As the candidates are getting cleverer, the board is getting wiser. We have done everything possible to avoid the issue of logging out. When a student sees that the questions are difficult, he plays some pranks, remove some wires, pulls out the cable. Then there is a problem. But we are going to monitor every system and if we discover that a candidate deliberately shut down a system, he will carry his cross.”

Our correspondent gathered that 211,000 out of 257,000 candidates sat the mock examination on Monday.