The Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, has said organising the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), in Nigeria is becoming a war due to the activities of owners of special centers.
Ojerinde, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at a press conference on the conduct of 2016 UTME, lamented the desperate measures taken by owners of special centres to perpetuate their acts of irregularities.
He said: “I want to say it here that conducting examination is becoming a war; it is already a war. You should have seen us in the control room of the examination. When the exam was going on, I was in the war front; I was not able to leave the control room.
“The invaders were over 20, well-armed men. The Nigeria Army had to mobilsie their men to make it possible for us to conduct examinations in Auchi, because the mercenaries in Uromi were determined to frustrate us, but of cause they frustrated them in return.”
Ojerinde, who revealed that a blind candidate scored 286 in the just concluded examination, accused proprietors of tutorial school owners of being behind the protests which was recently carried out by candidates of the last UTME, who stormed the Lagos State House of Assembly recently to protest alleged maltreatment by JAMB in the examination.
“The organisers of the protest did not do it in the interest of the candidates but done as a result of their frustration due to their inability to perpetuate their planned acts of irregularities.
“Majority of these people who are frustrated collected huge sums of monies from the candidates, they were the organisers of the protest. We have adequate information to prove it.”
He revealed that a centre owner in Kaduna has been arrested and investigation was ongoing, adding that some JAMB officials were offered as much as N6 million to compromise in their centers but refused.
