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The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof Dibu Ojerinde, in
this interview with ADELANI ADEPEGBA sheds light on controversies surrounding
university admissions in the country
What informed the Computer-Based Test?
We believed it’s one of the ways we can reduce examination malpractices. The
global trend now is the use of technology and we felt we should not be left
behind in Nigeria. On the other hand, the issue of problems being encountered
by the candidates in terms of missing results, malpractices and things like that
will be eliminated totally. These are some of the reasons and in any case, we
think also that it would improve the technological know-how of our kids in this
country.
Did the board take into account the literacy level in the country before adopting
the CBT?
Our design is such that if you can use a mobile handset, you can do our exams;
you can do the CBT if you can read ABCD. When the answers come up for you,
and you know that the answer is A or B or C or D, you punch and that is it. You
don’t even need to use the mouse except you know how to use it. If you don’t
know how to use it, you don’t need to. The cursor goes up to your right then, to
your left, that is all and we give them maximum of 15 minutes orientation and
before you know it, they are coping. So, that is our experience so far and it’s
been very wonderful.
What are the measures and arrangements you have in place to make the CBT
succeed?
Last year, we had 55 centres all over the country but now, we have about 159.
That is about three times what we had last year which is a very wonderful
development. The tertiary institutions that we didn’t use last year have now
come up; even private establishments, institutions and individuals have
established computer-based test centres. We had about 300 applicants, willing
centres, but when we screened them, we discovered that we could use only
about 159 for this country. I think we are lucky that a lot of people are now
anxious about the use of CBT and we discovered that last year, they performed
relatively better. There were no examination malpractices or missing results;
no hues and cries. So, I think we should continue. On our part, we have
constructed about 10 centres, at least in nine offices outside Bwari. In our own
centre in Bwari here, we can take about 250 candidates. In other offices across
the country like in Jigawa, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ekiti, Delta, Abia, Taraba and
Benue, those places can take about 120 candidates each and we hope with time,
we will be able to expand our horizon to other parts of the country. But our
centre in Abuja here can take 250 candidates at a go and that is our plan for
other places too, if God helps us.
With the epileptic supply, how is the board addressing the issue of power supply
at CBT centres?
When I said 300 establishments applied (for the CBT centres), they did not all
qualify because they didn’t have back-up electricity like inverters or generators.
In fact, we have told them we will consider generators rather than public power
supply because it can fail us. But if they have inverters that can last for the next
20-30 minutes before they change to generators, so be it. If you don’t have all
these facilities, we won’t accredit you. And that is what has led to a sharp
reduction from over 300 applicants to 159 acceptable applicants.
So, what would happen to candidates in the rural areas who have no access to
computers?
Well, I have said it, if you can use a handset, then you should be able to do our
exams. It has been designed. I think seeing is believing, when we are conducting
exams, just come along or go to a rural place where the examination is taking
place and see the reaction of these young kids in the various centres. It is not a
sophisticated design; it’s a very simple one. Of course, in future, there will be
what we call multimedia approach. In terms of the things in place, do you know
that prison inmates are now ready to take our CBT? We have about 150 or so in
Kaduna prisons and another 25 or so in Ikoyi, Lagos. We are going to give them
opportunity to take the exams using the computer-based approach.
Is it true that JAMB deliberately reduced the number of candidates that took the
pencil test this year?
We didn’t reduce the number; we just told them these were the available spaces.
Look, we have about 1 million who sat for the paper pencil test and if they say
we reduced it, I won’t say we reduced it because we told them these were the
available spaces and some of these spaces are not even full. Of course, it
depends on where you are; some of the places were not filled up, to the extent
that a place that would normally take 540, we had 400, in some places, 295. I
know, particularly in my town, we had only about 442 candidates instead of 540.
In fact, multiplied by about five centres that were available, so it was not
deliberate; that was what happened this time around. It seems to me people are
getting more conscious, more aware and are appreciating the use of the
computer than paper and pencil.
Why does the board ask candidates to pay for admission letters by asking them
to buy cards to print out letters, isn’t that extortion?
Pay for admission letter? They are not paying for admission letter. We are only
saying, go and print your admission letters. Instead of mailing the letters which
may never get to them because of unknown addresses or instead of telling
them, “come and collect your letter here,” we say “don’t worry, go to the
internet and print your letter of admission.” That is all. You see, we do five
things online; you register online; two, you check your result online; three, you
change your course or whatever you want to do or your name; four, you print
your letter of admission and you don’t pay for it. That has reduced the crowd in
our office here and other state offices. If you see anyone coming here, trying
to cram into this place, they are not coming to say they don’t have their letters
of admission, they may have other things to say or to worry about; this is the
truth.
There are allegations that JAMB did not set questions on the literature books it
asked candidates to buy. Why?
Who said that? This year, and even last year, 15 questions were set on the
recommended literature texts. You see now, they give you wrong information;
That is the point. If I bring a typical question for you, whether you are a science
student, social student, engineering, agric, education, name it, they are
supposed to answer those questions. Why are we doing it? To increase the
reading culture of Nigerians and that’s it. And you now discover that they are
not reading and that is why most of them are failing. They are not even reading
their text books.
How true is it that the authors of some of the books are close to JAMB?
They should be close to us; we are using their books or should we use our
enemies’ books? (Laughter). Obviously, they will be close…let me tell you the
procedure. We said we wanted books that Nigerians can read; we approached
the National Library of Nigeria. We also approached the Association of Nigerian
Authors. So the two bodies worked together to say these books are good for
the Nigerian child, we therefore went ahead and they recommended the books.
And the books went through the normal procedure of acceptance. In fact, the
Nigerian Education Research Development Council was also involved before we
accepted it, but we don’t necessarily have to go to the NERDC. But in any case,
that is the situation. I don’t even know Chukwuemeka Ike, I don’t know whether
the author is still alive. They chose his book for us and we accepted it. Sincerely,
that is the truth.
How many examination cheats has JAMB prosecuted since inception?
They are many. The only thing is that we are not supposed to be the
prosecutor; we are supposed to be witnesses. What we do is to send them to
the police and when the police take them to court, we become witnesses. But
unfortunately, it’s not very easy, going by the penal code. It’s very difficult to
prosecute them, but a lot of them have taken us to court before for all manner
of reasons such as ‘they didn’t release my result,’ ‘they cancelled my result for
no reason,’ but they have never won because we tell them, we know what we
are doing, they have never won. There was a case of somebody who dragged
the suit until he got his Master’s degree. Do you know that last year, his result
was finally cancelled, even though he appealed, the Court of Appeal said JAMB
was right. He joined the University of Ibadan and JAMB. He got Bachelor’s
degree wrongly from UI and UI protested. He went to court and the court said,
‘let him continue his education’ and the case was going on. He finished his
Bachelor’s degree, went for Master’s degree and now the case has been
decided and all the Bachelor and Master’s degrees are null and void. Just last
year, so things are happening.
Is it the intricacy of the penal code that is hindering the prosecution of exam
cheats?
I am not a lawyer, but they know their tricks here and there, but we have a law,
the 1999 Examination Malpractices Law, Act no 33. But it has been very difficult
to implement it. I think now, the National Assembly is working on a new law for
WAEC which we think would apply to us also. As soon as that law is passed, we
are going to implement it.
Some parents are complaining of extortion on forms and scratch cards. What’s
your reaction to this?
Well, they will always complain. If you want something good, you must be ready
to pay for it. Service is being delivered, but what is the extortion? Let me tell
you: if you came around here around 2006/2007, you would see the crowd by
the gate. They came all the way from Port Harcourt, from Lagos, from
Maiduguri asking for their results, their letters and so on and we are saying no,
forget it. Don’t come here again, stay where you are and you get it online. The
money you’d spend to come from Lagos to Abuja, to Bwari here and back is
about 10 times of what we are asking you to pay for services rendered in the
comfort of your room. Well, if they don’t want it, let them leave it. We are not
forcing them to check their results. When we are ready, we will send their result
to the institution of their choice, so they can go and check it over there. It’s not
extortion. As far as I am concerned, it’s more of paying for the services that are
being rendered. Documents are on the internet and we have a bandwidth which
the documents are occupying; the Internet Service Providers will not give it to
us free. Are we going to pay for the bandwidth from the little money candidates
pay for registration which is not even sufficient? Government is still subsidising.
I am sorry, that allegation of extortion is a new dimension. Nobody said that
last year, nobody said it two or three years ago when they were getting it easily.
Now because they don’t read their books and they are failing, they are now
saying we are extorting them. I don’t believe that is the way it should be. Let us
learn how to pay for services being rendered. You can’t give me a copy of your
newspaper free of charge because you are not a welfare organisation; you
should make money from your enterprise. Of course, I am not saying we are
making money from this exercise, but let people pay for the services. The
Yoruba say, “ogun ti a ko ba fi owo ra, ehin aaro lo ngbe” meaning, if there is a
medicine that you did not buy with money, the tendency is for you to keep it
behind the oven where it would get burnt. That is what is happening.
How will the board tackle the problem of hackers and slow internet during the
CBT?
Slow internet? The bandwidth must be increased. When we started, we used six
units. Then, when we increased it to 12 units, we discovered that it was getting
faster and now we are using between 18-24 units and it’s now quite fast. And
that is what has happened. Now when we send a piece of information from the
office here, within three minutes, it has landed anywhere in the world. So, that is
one achievement, but of course, because of one reason or the other, it may
last up to six to seven minutes. If I tell you what we are doing, I hope the
hackers won’t go and counter it. But we are making efforts to ensure everything
goes on smoothly.
In your own opinion, why do we still record mass failure in the UTME?
In my own opinion, there is nothing like mass failure. You see, there is no fail-
pass dichotomy system in JAMB exams. Have you seen or heard about a
candidate who scored 270 and could not gain admission into any tertiary
institution, whereas, somebody scored 220 and he is admitted? Such things do
happen, depending on your choice. A prospective medical student who scored
270 could not gain admission two years ago; it will still happen this year. But if
you are applying for agric, education, environmental sciences, with 250 or 230,
you will be admitted into a university. You will think that because 270 is greater,
that the student should gain admission, but the fact is that the students did not
sit for the same subjects, or apply to the same school. These are the things
causing the discrepancy in the system in terms of who will gain university
admission and who would not be admitted. The only thing we can argue about
is that if somebody scores 280, and another person scores 240 or 260 and we
are now giving admission to the candidate that scored 240, then we can query
it. But of course, the caveat of post-UTME is there. You have to undergo further
screening from the various institutions to prove that you are the rightful owner
of that score. One of the things that would help us in this exercise is the
Computer-Based Test so that when you get your CBT score, you know it’s your
result. Nobody helped you, you didn’t spy, it’s your ability and therefore, if they
confront you with another Computer-Based Test at Post-UTME, you will be able
to say it is your result and you will prove it. We have seen that and it correlates
more with the Post-UTME than paper and pencil. People don’t fail UTME, only
they are not admitted. For example, if you have two million spaces in our
tertiary institutions and only 1.6 million candidates took the examinations, and
they have the prerequisite of SSCE, we will take all of them, you don’t even need
to take JAMB again, but there is competition now, it is the survival of the fittest.
That is what is happening.
Why do you think some candidates who did well in UTME could not repeat the
same feat in the Post-UTME screening? .............
this interview with ADELANI ADEPEGBA sheds light on controversies surrounding
university admissions in the country
What informed the Computer-Based Test?
We believed it’s one of the ways we can reduce examination malpractices. The
global trend now is the use of technology and we felt we should not be left
behind in Nigeria. On the other hand, the issue of problems being encountered
by the candidates in terms of missing results, malpractices and things like that
will be eliminated totally. These are some of the reasons and in any case, we
think also that it would improve the technological know-how of our kids in this
country.
Did the board take into account the literacy level in the country before adopting
the CBT?
Our design is such that if you can use a mobile handset, you can do our exams;
you can do the CBT if you can read ABCD. When the answers come up for you,
and you know that the answer is A or B or C or D, you punch and that is it. You
don’t even need to use the mouse except you know how to use it. If you don’t
know how to use it, you don’t need to. The cursor goes up to your right then, to
your left, that is all and we give them maximum of 15 minutes orientation and
before you know it, they are coping. So, that is our experience so far and it’s
been very wonderful.
What are the measures and arrangements you have in place to make the CBT
succeed?
Last year, we had 55 centres all over the country but now, we have about 159.
That is about three times what we had last year which is a very wonderful
development. The tertiary institutions that we didn’t use last year have now
come up; even private establishments, institutions and individuals have
established computer-based test centres. We had about 300 applicants, willing
centres, but when we screened them, we discovered that we could use only
about 159 for this country. I think we are lucky that a lot of people are now
anxious about the use of CBT and we discovered that last year, they performed
relatively better. There were no examination malpractices or missing results;
no hues and cries. So, I think we should continue. On our part, we have
constructed about 10 centres, at least in nine offices outside Bwari. In our own
centre in Bwari here, we can take about 250 candidates. In other offices across
the country like in Jigawa, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ekiti, Delta, Abia, Taraba and
Benue, those places can take about 120 candidates each and we hope with time,
we will be able to expand our horizon to other parts of the country. But our
centre in Abuja here can take 250 candidates at a go and that is our plan for
other places too, if God helps us.
With the epileptic supply, how is the board addressing the issue of power supply
at CBT centres?
When I said 300 establishments applied (for the CBT centres), they did not all
qualify because they didn’t have back-up electricity like inverters or generators.
In fact, we have told them we will consider generators rather than public power
supply because it can fail us. But if they have inverters that can last for the next
20-30 minutes before they change to generators, so be it. If you don’t have all
these facilities, we won’t accredit you. And that is what has led to a sharp
reduction from over 300 applicants to 159 acceptable applicants.
So, what would happen to candidates in the rural areas who have no access to
computers?
Well, I have said it, if you can use a handset, then you should be able to do our
exams. It has been designed. I think seeing is believing, when we are conducting
exams, just come along or go to a rural place where the examination is taking
place and see the reaction of these young kids in the various centres. It is not a
sophisticated design; it’s a very simple one. Of course, in future, there will be
what we call multimedia approach. In terms of the things in place, do you know
that prison inmates are now ready to take our CBT? We have about 150 or so in
Kaduna prisons and another 25 or so in Ikoyi, Lagos. We are going to give them
opportunity to take the exams using the computer-based approach.
Is it true that JAMB deliberately reduced the number of candidates that took the
pencil test this year?
We didn’t reduce the number; we just told them these were the available spaces.
Look, we have about 1 million who sat for the paper pencil test and if they say
we reduced it, I won’t say we reduced it because we told them these were the
available spaces and some of these spaces are not even full. Of course, it
depends on where you are; some of the places were not filled up, to the extent
that a place that would normally take 540, we had 400, in some places, 295. I
know, particularly in my town, we had only about 442 candidates instead of 540.
In fact, multiplied by about five centres that were available, so it was not
deliberate; that was what happened this time around. It seems to me people are
getting more conscious, more aware and are appreciating the use of the
computer than paper and pencil.
Why does the board ask candidates to pay for admission letters by asking them
to buy cards to print out letters, isn’t that extortion?
Pay for admission letter? They are not paying for admission letter. We are only
saying, go and print your admission letters. Instead of mailing the letters which
may never get to them because of unknown addresses or instead of telling
them, “come and collect your letter here,” we say “don’t worry, go to the
internet and print your letter of admission.” That is all. You see, we do five
things online; you register online; two, you check your result online; three, you
change your course or whatever you want to do or your name; four, you print
your letter of admission and you don’t pay for it. That has reduced the crowd in
our office here and other state offices. If you see anyone coming here, trying
to cram into this place, they are not coming to say they don’t have their letters
of admission, they may have other things to say or to worry about; this is the
truth.
There are allegations that JAMB did not set questions on the literature books it
asked candidates to buy. Why?
Who said that? This year, and even last year, 15 questions were set on the
recommended literature texts. You see now, they give you wrong information;
That is the point. If I bring a typical question for you, whether you are a science
student, social student, engineering, agric, education, name it, they are
supposed to answer those questions. Why are we doing it? To increase the
reading culture of Nigerians and that’s it. And you now discover that they are
not reading and that is why most of them are failing. They are not even reading
their text books.
How true is it that the authors of some of the books are close to JAMB?
They should be close to us; we are using their books or should we use our
enemies’ books? (Laughter). Obviously, they will be close…let me tell you the
procedure. We said we wanted books that Nigerians can read; we approached
the National Library of Nigeria. We also approached the Association of Nigerian
Authors. So the two bodies worked together to say these books are good for
the Nigerian child, we therefore went ahead and they recommended the books.
And the books went through the normal procedure of acceptance. In fact, the
Nigerian Education Research Development Council was also involved before we
accepted it, but we don’t necessarily have to go to the NERDC. But in any case,
that is the situation. I don’t even know Chukwuemeka Ike, I don’t know whether
the author is still alive. They chose his book for us and we accepted it. Sincerely,
that is the truth.
How many examination cheats has JAMB prosecuted since inception?
They are many. The only thing is that we are not supposed to be the
prosecutor; we are supposed to be witnesses. What we do is to send them to
the police and when the police take them to court, we become witnesses. But
unfortunately, it’s not very easy, going by the penal code. It’s very difficult to
prosecute them, but a lot of them have taken us to court before for all manner
of reasons such as ‘they didn’t release my result,’ ‘they cancelled my result for
no reason,’ but they have never won because we tell them, we know what we
are doing, they have never won. There was a case of somebody who dragged
the suit until he got his Master’s degree. Do you know that last year, his result
was finally cancelled, even though he appealed, the Court of Appeal said JAMB
was right. He joined the University of Ibadan and JAMB. He got Bachelor’s
degree wrongly from UI and UI protested. He went to court and the court said,
‘let him continue his education’ and the case was going on. He finished his
Bachelor’s degree, went for Master’s degree and now the case has been
decided and all the Bachelor and Master’s degrees are null and void. Just last
year, so things are happening.
Is it the intricacy of the penal code that is hindering the prosecution of exam
cheats?
I am not a lawyer, but they know their tricks here and there, but we have a law,
the 1999 Examination Malpractices Law, Act no 33. But it has been very difficult
to implement it. I think now, the National Assembly is working on a new law for
WAEC which we think would apply to us also. As soon as that law is passed, we
are going to implement it.
Some parents are complaining of extortion on forms and scratch cards. What’s
your reaction to this?
Well, they will always complain. If you want something good, you must be ready
to pay for it. Service is being delivered, but what is the extortion? Let me tell
you: if you came around here around 2006/2007, you would see the crowd by
the gate. They came all the way from Port Harcourt, from Lagos, from
Maiduguri asking for their results, their letters and so on and we are saying no,
forget it. Don’t come here again, stay where you are and you get it online. The
money you’d spend to come from Lagos to Abuja, to Bwari here and back is
about 10 times of what we are asking you to pay for services rendered in the
comfort of your room. Well, if they don’t want it, let them leave it. We are not
forcing them to check their results. When we are ready, we will send their result
to the institution of their choice, so they can go and check it over there. It’s not
extortion. As far as I am concerned, it’s more of paying for the services that are
being rendered. Documents are on the internet and we have a bandwidth which
the documents are occupying; the Internet Service Providers will not give it to
us free. Are we going to pay for the bandwidth from the little money candidates
pay for registration which is not even sufficient? Government is still subsidising.
I am sorry, that allegation of extortion is a new dimension. Nobody said that
last year, nobody said it two or three years ago when they were getting it easily.
Now because they don’t read their books and they are failing, they are now
saying we are extorting them. I don’t believe that is the way it should be. Let us
learn how to pay for services being rendered. You can’t give me a copy of your
newspaper free of charge because you are not a welfare organisation; you
should make money from your enterprise. Of course, I am not saying we are
making money from this exercise, but let people pay for the services. The
Yoruba say, “ogun ti a ko ba fi owo ra, ehin aaro lo ngbe” meaning, if there is a
medicine that you did not buy with money, the tendency is for you to keep it
behind the oven where it would get burnt. That is what is happening.
How will the board tackle the problem of hackers and slow internet during the
CBT?
Slow internet? The bandwidth must be increased. When we started, we used six
units. Then, when we increased it to 12 units, we discovered that it was getting
faster and now we are using between 18-24 units and it’s now quite fast. And
that is what has happened. Now when we send a piece of information from the
office here, within three minutes, it has landed anywhere in the world. So, that is
one achievement, but of course, because of one reason or the other, it may
last up to six to seven minutes. If I tell you what we are doing, I hope the
hackers won’t go and counter it. But we are making efforts to ensure everything
goes on smoothly.
In your own opinion, why do we still record mass failure in the UTME?
In my own opinion, there is nothing like mass failure. You see, there is no fail-
pass dichotomy system in JAMB exams. Have you seen or heard about a
candidate who scored 270 and could not gain admission into any tertiary
institution, whereas, somebody scored 220 and he is admitted? Such things do
happen, depending on your choice. A prospective medical student who scored
270 could not gain admission two years ago; it will still happen this year. But if
you are applying for agric, education, environmental sciences, with 250 or 230,
you will be admitted into a university. You will think that because 270 is greater,
that the student should gain admission, but the fact is that the students did not
sit for the same subjects, or apply to the same school. These are the things
causing the discrepancy in the system in terms of who will gain university
admission and who would not be admitted. The only thing we can argue about
is that if somebody scores 280, and another person scores 240 or 260 and we
are now giving admission to the candidate that scored 240, then we can query
it. But of course, the caveat of post-UTME is there. You have to undergo further
screening from the various institutions to prove that you are the rightful owner
of that score. One of the things that would help us in this exercise is the
Computer-Based Test so that when you get your CBT score, you know it’s your
result. Nobody helped you, you didn’t spy, it’s your ability and therefore, if they
confront you with another Computer-Based Test at Post-UTME, you will be able
to say it is your result and you will prove it. We have seen that and it correlates
more with the Post-UTME than paper and pencil. People don’t fail UTME, only
they are not admitted. For example, if you have two million spaces in our
tertiary institutions and only 1.6 million candidates took the examinations, and
they have the prerequisite of SSCE, we will take all of them, you don’t even need
to take JAMB again, but there is competition now, it is the survival of the fittest.
That is what is happening.
Why do you think some candidates who did well in UTME could not repeat the
same feat in the Post-UTME screening? .............
