The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said it would no longer reschedule candidates for the make-up Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The disclosure was contained in the board’s Weekly Bulletin issued today by the office of its Registrar in Abuja.
The decision to scrap the mop-up examination, which was introduced in 2017, followed the board’s assessment of its impact on the value-chain of the examination.
The board said it lately realised that the make-up UTME had been ineffective so far.
It asserted that scrapping it would further strengthen the knot around examination malpractices and prevent security breach.
The statement read, “The board has decided that the era whereby some candidates will present themselves at the examination venue and claim difficulty to be biometrically verified and expect the system to allow them to sit for the examination is gone for good.
“Consequently, the management of the board has regrettably resolved that all candidates must be verified to sit for their examination as there will be no more mop-ups UTME for whatever reason.
“To cater for the few that may have genuine cases of inability to be captured, such candidates are to clearly indicate such difficulty from the point of registration.
“This is so that they can be assigned to a centre situated within the National headquarters of the board for close monitoring.”
The board explained that the decision was part of the efforts required to sensitize the examination process.
It pointed out that examination malpractice remained one of the major obstacles bedevilling public examination bodies around the world.
The board further warned that “no candidate of the UTME will be allowed to sit for its examination without first being biometrically verified.”
It declared that all 10 fingers of the candidate must be captured at the point of registration.
The statement added, “To combat the menace of examination malpractice, the board has taken full advantage of technology by introducing, among others, biometric capturing of a candidate’s 10 fingers during UTME registration.
“This is to ensure there is a convincing match between the fingerprints captured and those presented by the candidate at the examination venue.”
