•At the press briefing: Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, JAMB Registrar (middle) flanked by Mrs Anthonia Ibama and Mallam Yakubu Omar Photo: Sun News Publishing

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Ahead of the forthcoming Universities Matriculation Examination, (UME), the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has urged examination coordinators to ensure that they conduct credible exercise devoid of malpractice.

Speaking at the 31st meeting of the coordinators with senior members of staff of the board in Lagos recently, the Registrar, Professor Dibu Ojerinde enjoined them to effectively coordinate the activities of the supervisors and invigilators and provide effective leadership to them.

The Registrar, who expressed concern over the spate of examination malpractices, particularly collusion and conspiracy between examination officials and candidates or their agents, charged officials to ensure that their subordinates stick to the rules and regulations guiding the examination.

He said: "We emphasize that since ours is a selection examination which when marred by ineffective supervision/invigilation, wrong candidates could be selected at the expense of candidates who merit admission, it is therefore your moral and civic responsibility to partner with the Board in ensuring that you meet and exceed the Boards’ expectations in the performance of your assignment."

The Registrar disclosed that the total number of candidates that registered for the examination was one million and fifty-two thousand, one hundred and twelve (1,052,112) and have been distributed to one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine centers nationwide while 46 coordinating institutions and supervisors are expected to take charge of the examinations.

Professor Ojerinde noted: "The Board has continued to ensure that our collective mandate is sustained, your institutions have continued to serve in our syllabus review exercises, item generation, moderation and selection of questions culminating in the examination at which you are required to host and ensure its successful conduct. We have therefore existed side by side in such partnership irrespective of setbacks and challenges that often tend to threaten such collaborations.

We should therefore be ready to accept responsibility of our collective actions and deeds, especially in view of the seeming criticisms looming over the conduct of our examinations.
"Although, we are trying our best to do things right, we believe that there is room for improvement in the administration of the examination.

"As part of our efforts to implement processes that will ensure transparency in the conduct of our examinations, we re-inspected and re-validated centers to ensure the centers are of high standard for our examination. We also assigned candidates according to the number of the respective centers they will comfortably accommodate. Security during examinations has also been looked into by engaging private security outfit to work with JAMB security to effectively monitor centers and maintain close surveillance during the examination."

The Registrar added: "Without sounding immodest, we have broken the jinx of late release of our results with the release of 2007 Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) barely three weeks and Monotechnics, Polytechnics, and Colleges of Education (MPCE) ten (10) days after the examinations were conducted. You were part of this success story through your efforts in ensuring hitch-free examination. The successes recorded are as a result of some measures we have put in place to ensure transparency and good conduct and we promise to do more and with your support we hope to achieve more."

He said the board has also ensured prompt payment of the coordinators, supervisors, invigilators and other individuals involved in the conduct of examinations. To address the issue of delay in payment of allowances, arrangements have been made to make all payments immediately after examinations.

During the interactive session with the coordinators, the Registrar noted that students who were unable to fill their forms on-line after the deadline for registration had closed were allowed to take their forms to the various JAMB offices nationwide with the sum of N10,000 and they would be given an authentication examination slip.

Students who registered off-line can only be allowed to write the examination if they bring the receipt of the N10,000 alongside the authentication slip to the invigilators.
Also, JAMB’s guidelines for supervisors, invigilators were shown on a slide which the coordinators would give to them to watch and get acquainted with the examination rules and regulations. Equally, various examinational practices were shown which invigilators should take note of such as, ladies hiding materials in their hair (wig), belts, breasts, inside a biro, while for the boys, they could hide them in their shoes, sleeves and collars of shirts, among others.

Some students would bring in text books, programmable calculators, mobile phones with blue tooth and communicate with people outside the examination hall. Students would pretend that they have a broken arm which has been bandaged but they would hide materials in it, exchange of papers in the examination hall, seeking or receiving materials from people outside the hall, impersonation, students assaulting invigilators and others.

Students who bring dangerous weapons such as guns into the examination hall should be apprehended and handed over to the police, the Registrar said. When there is mass cheating in an examination center, the entire center would be cancelled. It was also revealed that students who usually tear off pages of their question papers are also involved in examination malpractice.