Mr Benjamin said out of the 947,000 candidates who had taken the test since Tuesday, only 64,000 have so far experienced hitches.
The Head of the Public Affairs and Protocol Unit of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Fabian Benjamin, has said the examination body is currently reviewing the details of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted so far.
Mr Benjamin said as soon as all ‘Ts’ are crossed and ‘Is’ dotted, results of candidates who have sat their papers since the examination kicked off on Tuesday will be released.
Mr Benjamin said this on Thursday after observing the ongoing examination in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“We are in a meeting now. We are looking at the results and by the grace of God, very soon we will release the first batch of results,” he said.
Commends JAMB
Meanwhile, the JAMB official also described the conduct of this year’s examination as ‘one of the best’ the examination body has conducted in recent times.
Mr Benjamin said this in spite of the hitches recorded at the commencement of the examination nationwide on Tuesday. The development, which JAMB noted was observed across about 100 computer-based test centres, led to rescheduling of the examination for the affected candidates.
He said: “This is one of the best examinations we’ve had over a period of time. I know that many will want to contest that fact because of what happened on Tuesday. But if you have been in the system and followed our exercise over a period of time you will know that the first exams are always turbulent and then as we progress, we stabilise and we continue the exercise.”
“Only 6% candidates experienced hitches”
Mr Benjamin said out of the 947,000 candidates who had taken the test since Tuesday only 64,000 have so far experienced hitches “and the board has rescheduled their tests for other sessions.”
Almost 1.6 million candidates seeking admission into Nigerian universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and monotechnics, are expected to take the tests before Tuesday 2 May.
“So for an exercise, if you are going to give a pass mark, out of 947,000, you have issues in about 60,000 I think it’s a fair share,” he said.
Mr Benjamin said while the board cannot promise Nigerians that technical hitches will not be experienced, he assured that all candidates who registered for the exams will be given the opportunity to take the tests.
“On the first day there were some candidates who were not able to sit for their exams because of some technical issues and we have rescheduled those candidates. Some of them are taking it as the fourth session and some of them will take it tomorrow,” he said.
“So we also urge candidates, particularly those who couldn’t sit for yesterday’s exercise to continue to check their profile to print their slips as they will be rescheduled to take the examinations.”
On Tuesday, this newspaper reported that candidates experienced minimal hitches and delay in centres visited across Lagos and Abuja. At a centre where a technical hitch was experienced, one of the supervisors said the hitch was from JAMB. Later that day, the board announced that it has rescheduled the test for all candidates who experienced hitches.
Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe