Following the commencement of the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination on Friday, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has appealed to candidates who experienced glitches in the course of the examination to remain calm as they would be rescheduled.

The JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyode, who made the appeal while fielding questions from newsmen after monitoring the exam in Kogo-Bwari, Abuja, said so far, the UTME had been going on smoothly as only one centre had been reported to have encountered issues.

“We appeal to the public to understand this. Some centres will fail. I have heard of only one centre that has failed today.

“By the end of today, I expect about 10 per cent of the centres to have one problem or the other because we know the level of development in different parts of the country.

“We are not encouraging this, but when it happens, please do not disrupt others. It is important to note that when a session fails because of a problem, you cannot bring those candidates to do session two, they will have to step aside, and the headquarters will have to be contacted.

“The earliest time they can be scheduled will be after 4:30 p.m. so that those slated for sections two and three can write, and these candidates can now write for session four, and in some cases, they can even be scheduled for the following day,” he said.

Speaking further, the JAMB boss said the exam body is not comfortable with the award of scholarships to UTME best-performing candidates on the basis of the exam alone, as that would not capture other criteria that are factored in for admission.

“Yes, MTN and other people are giving scholarships to the highest (scorers) but we have always discouraged them because you scored high in UTME doesn’t mean you are the best because some other factors will come in; the quality of your O Level will be added to it, post-UTME scores will be added to it. If you are going to NDA, your physical exercise will be added to it before we can say that you are the best; before we rank you, why rank people prematurely?

“You will see somebody saying my son scored 330, and in addition to that, he had seven A1s. Is he not qualified? He might be qualified when you are ranking people in your village; when it comes to Nigeria, he may be 650 despite the so-called brilliant to you,” he said.

The 2024 UTME is being held across the country today and will continue tomorrow.

Students of the Federal Polytechnic Oko in Anambra boycotted exams to protest an alleged unexpected fee imposed on them.

The students, on Wednesday, opposed what they described as the school’s “constant imposition of exam fees and other levies”.

The undergraduates numbering up to 1,000 from different departments held up placards and sang in protest.

They cordoned off the school’s main gate, administrative building, departments, permanent site, and the popular school tower.

Their placards had such inscriptions as “reduce the cost of textbooks”, “allow us to do our medical and data capture”, “say no to corrupt stakeholders”, “say no to exam fees”, and “break down our tuition fees”, among others.

Chukwuebuka Umezula, the vice president of the National Association of Polytechnic Students in the south-east, said the management released a memo on April 9 informing “students to pay an exam fee of N5,000 on or before their exercise began on April 12”.

He questioned the rationale behind the additional exam fee after students had paid their fees for the session.

He also said the memo came on short notice and fell on a public holiday.

Umezula said the students will continue the protest and boycott all exams in the school until the management rescinds its decision.

He said they had laboured to pay tuition, medical, and ICT fees and expressed shock over the new examination fee.

He said the National Association of Polytechnic Students had written the school management over the memo but it fell on deaf ears.

Also speaking, Cynthia Felix, the secretary general of the National Association of Nigeria Students (NANS) south-east zone, said the association is working to ensure the students are not fleeced in any way.

She said the exam fee was unlawful, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the memo that introduced the fee.

The secretary-general said all students should be allowed to sit their examinations.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has asked Computer-Based Test (CBT) centre owners to ensure the arrest of any parent loitering around their facilities during the 2024 Unified Tertuiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) exercise.

The 2024 UTME is scheduled to commence on April 19 and end on April 29.

Ishaq Oloyede, the JAMB registrar, spoke at the final briefing of the CBT centre owners which was held virtually on Wednesday.

He said the directive to arrest meddlesome parents became necessary following their intrusive disposition during the previous UTMEs.

Oloyede said any parent who loiters around exam centres would not only be arrested but their ward would be disqualified.

He said it has been discovered over time that many of these intruding parents facilitate exam infractions.

The registrar said some miscreants disguise themselves as parents to infiltrate the centres and perpetrate infractions.

JAMB also directed security operatives to work with the centres to apprehend any meddlesome parent.

“Going by the extant national policy on education, a candidate for the examination must have attained the age of 17 years,” he said.

“It is evident that these parents had not allowed their wards to pass through the classes as defined in the document, hence, the determination to follow their wards to the examination venue to compromise examination officials.

“At any rate, it is clear to any discerning observer that these parents deserve to be sanctioned as they had obviously ‘smuggled’ underage children into the ranks of those scheduled to sit the examination.”

Oloyede appealed to centre owners to consider their assignment a national engagement, not a purely profit-driven venture.

He expressed shock over multiple intelligence showing how CBT centres have been making efforts to compromise the board’s staff, especially with the offer of accommodation.

He asked why they would want to do that when they constantly complain that what is paid them is not enough.

The registrar said the centres should not hesitate to expose any JAMB staff member who asks for such favours as the board had sufficiently paid its staff for the exercise in line with government regulations.

He informed the participants that the board had deployed state-of-the-art technologies to check all infractions, collaborations, and other unsavoury acts at variance with its code of operations.