UTME may not hold in troubled northern states

Minister of Education:Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufa’i

                    Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board on Wednesday said the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination might not hold in troubled states in the North.

The examination, in which over 1, 735,720 candidates are expected to participate in will hold on Saturday.

Addressing journalists in Abuja, the JAMB Registrar/Chief Executive, Prof. ‘Dibu Ojerinde, said the board “may not hesitate to stop the examination if there is any security problem”.

Responding to a question on security challenges in the country, Ojerinde said, “Yesterday it was a big discussion among some agents as well as JAMB. We believe that things will be all right. You see, we believe that we will surmount the problem.

“If however, there is any problem, we may not hesitate to stop the examination in those areas to the extent that we will now give the children a chance of doing the examination on CBT only.

“If you miss Paper Pencil Test in a challenging area that you cannot do the examination, then you will have to do the next one and that will have to be as from May 18.

“With God, we shall not experience any problem. We have put everything humanly possible in place, we have put this before God, and we believe he is not going to sleep on that day. But if there is a need for postponement in those places, we shall not hesitate.”

There have been reported cases of violence occasioned by the activities of the insurgent group, Boko Haram, in many states in the north in recent time.

Meanwhile, Ojerinde, said the Board had concluded arrangement for its first Computer Based Test in 70 centres across the nation from May 18 to June 1.

The CBT, he said, was an alternative to the Dual Based Test and PPT scheduled for Saturday.

Ojerinde said 1,629,102 candidates applied for the IPT, 15,008 candidates for the Dual Based Test while 91,610 candidates applied for the CBT.

He said the figure for 2013 showed an increase of 231,789 applicants when compared with last year’s figure of 1,503,931 representing an increase of 13.35 per cent.

Ojerinde said 145 visually-impaired candidates registered for the examination while 196 inmates registered for it from Kaduna and Lagos prisons.