JAMB plans mega centres for UTME

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board is planning to collaborate with key stakeholders to establish mega centres for the conduct of its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

JAMB’s Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, on Thursday said the board announced the plan at a news conference in Lagos, after an on-the-spot assessment of some Computer Based Testing centres where the UTME was being conducted in the city.

He said that he was not impressed with the standard of some of the centres, adding that the board needed to be more stringent.

According to him, most of the centres currently being used for the examination fell short of the standard.

“Having gone round 69 centres in Lagos alone, I have disqualified four.

“In fact, I do not see up to 30 of these centres being up-to-date and meeting our set rules.

“We will re-assess these centres in order to protect the sanctity of our examination,’’ the registrar said.

“The plan currently on ground is to collaborate with my colleague professors and some other key stakeholders on how to create mega centres with a capacity to sit about 1,500 candidates at once, in a centre.

“We will encourage those who have what it takes to establish CBT centres to do it.

“This is because we no longer want to work with some private centre owners,’’ he added.