Chidimma UCHEGBU
No fewer than 84,000 candidates on Tuesday sat for the rescheduled Mock-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (Mock-UTME) which was held across the country.
Registrar/Chief Executive of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Is-haq Oloyede, who made this known while fielding questions from newsmen after monitoring the exam in Abuja, expressed delight over the hitch-free exercise.
While commending candidates for showing understanding over the board’s decision to reschedule the examination for Tuesday (today), Oloyede said the glitches earlier observed in the Mock-UTME in some centres that prompted it to be rescheduled was as a result of deployments of innovations .
He said: “We should also thank the students for bearing with us when we were trial-testing. You know we gave a notice that we were moving to a new level and I think by God’s grace, we are now arriving at the next level. Those things we wanted to test, we have seen what they were and we went back and made sure everything works and it is working.
“We will still be focused on issues relating to cable- that you called network in the centre, there may be few centres that we may have one problem or the other but we are going to get over that.
“For example, we have decided all those with zero thin client (computers that have no CPU identity but rely on central server and share same IP address) will have to change if they must continue on our network.”
Speaking further, the JAMB boss said the Mock-UTME held in 387 Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres across the country, with 16 of the centres having two sessions, adding that the results of the exam would be out today.
“They will get their results today, of course the results will be out today, and how many of them? 84,000,” Oloyede said.
On his part, JAMB’s Director of Information Technology Services (ITS), Fabian Okoro, who was on ground at the control room domiciled in the exam body’s headquarters in Bwari, Abuja, said real time information from all CBT centres revealed that the exam was conducted smoothly.
“When we did the first exam, we were testing new features and we observed lapses, we have to go back to the drawing board and make sure they are corrected.
“You can see from the control room here, there are less calls coming in, that shows the exam is moving smoothly and peacefully in all the centres across the country,” Okoro said.
JAMB’s ICT consultant, Damilola Bamiro, who was also in the control/call room to ensure any possible technical issue regarding the mock exam is immediately resolved, corroborated Okoro’s views.
During a visit to some of the CBT centres in Abuja which include the one in Total Child Model College, Dutse, JAMB CBT Centre, Kogo, among others, candidates were seen taking part in the exam in an orderly manner.
One of the candidates, Luka Mercy, commended JAMB for ensuring that the mock exam went on as planned without any issue.
“The JAMB (exam) was actually a good and successful one, no problem at all, no worries. The computer did not go off and I finished successfully and I really enjoyed the questions that were set.”
Asked on the course she intends to study, the 17-year-old Mercy said:”I applied to Nasarawa State University, Keffi, to study Political Science. Actually I want to become a politician in the future and if possible, the first woman president of Nigeria.”
Recall that the mock exam was designed for the purpose of testing JAMB’s preparedness and that of its partners for UTME as well as give prospective candidates the opportunity to have hands-on experience of the CBT test environment.
