Hundreds of admission seekers to the nation’s tertiary institutions and their parents on Tuesday stormed the Lagos State Governor’s Office in Alausa, Ikeja, and the state Assembly complex to protest against alleged manipulation of the 2016 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
The protesters demanded the cancellation of the exams and the removal of the Registrar of the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde.
The protesters, who faulted the conduct of the examination, described the exercise as a “big sham.”
The examination, conducted by JAMB, they alleged, was fraught with irregularities.
The examination, which started on February 27, will end on March 19.
While some of the candidates alleged that the board deliberately lowered their scores, some claimed that it arbitrarily awarded marks to many candidates.
The protesters, led by a group under the aegis of Concerned Parents and Education Stakeholders, displayed placards with inscriptions such as, ‘All we are saying give us our mark’, ‘Dibu must go; the only stumbling block in education progress’, ‘The Joint Admission and Manipulation Board, give us our real results’, and ‘The professor of test and management has outlived his usefulness’, among others.
The protesters, who occupied the gate of the Lagos State House of Assembly complex for many hours, said JAMB and its registrar had “lost focus on how to conduct a successful Computer-Based Test in the 21st century.
A candidate, Maryam Animashaun, who expressed disappointment with the conduct of the examination, claimed that she received three different results from JAMB.
Animashaun, who sat for the examination at the College of Education, Oro, Kwara State, said, “I am confused. I do not know what to do now. The first alert I received on the telephone from the board with regard to the examination showed that I scored 218. The second alert read 186, while the third one read 286.
“The surprising thing now is that I cannot print any of the results. On the website, the board claimed that I did not sit for the examination. Meanwhile, I sat for English, Government, Economics and Literature-in-English.”
Another candidate, Kalasuwe Adeola, who claimed she scored 220, said she obtained the same score in 2015.
Queen
March 16, 2016 at 3:07 pm
Jamb has taught me that, luck is far better than intelligence.
AngryYouth
March 16, 2016 at 10:10 am
This years jamb is nothing but a sham! Jamb removed marks from the brilliant ones and ‘dashed’ them to the not so brilliant ones, 40 marks each were given to the olodos. I should have scored nothing less than 270 but jamb gave me 184! In 2014 with little or no preparation whatsoever I scored 223. This year’s jamb, i dedicated pretty much all my time to studying only for jamb to crush my dreams with a paltry 184 when I know I should be getting into high 200’s. And the on-screen calculator is no no especially for science students, a calculator that doesn’t have decimal points, square root among many other functions missing! The only functions the calculator could carry out was addition and subtraction, division was a pain in the behind. In developed climes around the world standard scientific calculators are not prohibited at exams, I don’t know why everything about Nigeria is always upside down. I cursed the day I was born a Nigerian #spit.