No fewer than 84,000 candidates on Tuesday sat for the rescheduled Mock-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (Mock-UTME) held nationwide by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Registrar/Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, who expressed delight over the hitch-free exercise, reiterated that the glitches earlier observed in the Mock-UTME in some centres which prompted the rescheduled exam for affected candidates, was as a result of the new innovations deployed by the board to address certain concerns.
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.”
The JAMB boss who revealed that the candidates would get their results today, noted that the Mock-UTME was held in 387 Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres across the country, with 16 of the centres having two sessions.
JAMB’s Director of Information Technology Services (ITS), Fabian Okoro, 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.
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.
