Candidates sitting for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) would from this year spend two hours instead of three hours to write the exam.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Registrar/Chief Executive Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, on Wednesday, March 29, stated this in Kaduna, during the opening ceremony of a strategic planning retreat on the monitoring, supervision and evaluation of 2017 UTME with the theme: “Inclusiveness and sensitisation of key external actors.”
According to JAMB, a total of 240,000 candidates have so far registered for the examination which has been scheduled for May 20, barely one week after the commencement of the sale of forms which is expected to end on April 22. The organisation said the reduction of hours was in line with international best standards and practices where no candidate is kept in an examination such as UTME for more than two hours.
He said: “We are going to reduce the duration of the examination for this year’s UTME. You cannot keep children of this age for three hours. For their age, the maximum time you can keep them is two hours. So, we are considering the reduction in the time they spend because once it is more than two hours you can’t expect that they will retain their presence of mind.”
Oloyede added that out of 13 commercial banks and the Nigeria Postal Service that have signified interest in the sales of the admission forms, only nine have paid for the number of application documents they required in the first instance. In a related development, since JAMB started the sale of the 2017 UTME form, candidates have been finding it hard to do their registration.
It was gathered from JAMB Twitter handle that the cause of the invalid pin being experienced by candidates was due to a very high rate of candidates buying ePINS without creating their profile first, incorrect email address provided at the bank teller and unforeseen technical issues in the PIN vending system. Recently, some Nigerians who distinguished themselves while studying in the United Kingdom were rewarded for their outstanding achievements in an elaborate ceremony.
Is this a welcome development ?