JAMB shuts down seven examination centres in Bayelsa

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has shut down seven examination centres in Bayelsa State over alleged violation of rules and regulations guiding Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The JAMB coordinator in the state, Abdusalam Mohammed, disclosed this on Tuesday in Yenagoa when he paid a courtesy call on the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Mohammed said some of the centres were de-listed for duplicating the Virtual Private Network (VPN) of their router, a development that compromised JAMB’s data security.

He added that other centres were shut down for charging outrageous sums during the registration of UTME candidates.

The coordinator said: “When the registration exercise commenced, we sent out a monitoring team who found that candidates were charged N5,000 for a service that should ordinarily cost N2,500.”

On JAMB’s readiness to conduct examinations in the COVID-19 era, Mohammed said the body trained its staff during the lockdown.

“We also sensitised candidates and provided personal prevention equipment.

READ ALSO: JAMB blacklists 22 CBTs for defrauding UTME candidates

“In order to reduce the crowd at our office during registration, we set out specific days that candidates could visit us. The intention was to reduce body contact between staff and candidates.

“Before the outbreak of COVID-19, we used to ask candidates to thumb-print documents, but that has been stopped so as to curtail the spread of the virus.

“We have replaced that with a One-Time Password (OTP), which is sent to the candidate. The OTP will verify the candidate and confirm if he or she is the original owner of that particular application.

“In the past, it was difficult to have 20,000 candidates for JAMB, but this year, the number has skyrocketed to 24,000 candidates, meaning that there is an improvement in the enrollment of students in Bayelsa,” he added.

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