From Victor Osula, Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has barred parents from the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) centres and ordered the accredited exam centers to arrest any parent found flouting the ban.
There are 700 Computer- based Test facilities for the 2024 UTME exercise.
Also, candidates of parents found to breach the directive and intrude would also be disqualified from writing the exam.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, who gave the order on Wednesday, during a virtual meeting with operators and owners of the CBT centres, urged security agents to work with CBT owners to ensure the smooth running of the exercise.
In a statement by the spokesman of JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the step is to prevent some parents from intruding into the conduct of the exam.
“This measure is necessary as it has been discovered over time that many of these intruding parents are facilitators of examination infractions while others have, by their actions, disrupted the Board’s examinations in the past. Some miscreants also disguise themselves as parents to infiltrate the centres to perpetrate all forms of infractions,” the statement read in part.
“Going by the extant national policy on education, a candidate for the examination must have attained the age of 17 years. Therefore, it is evident that these parents have not allowed their wards to pass through the classes as defined in the document; hence, the determination to follow their wards to the examination venue with the aim of compromising examination officials.
“At any rate, it is clear to any discerning observer that these parents deserve to be sanctioned, as they have obviously ‘smuggled’ underage children into the ranks of those scheduled to sit for the examination.
“The board said it expects a seamless exercise but has nevertheless made adequate provision to tackle any technical glitch that might occur in the course of the examination.
“If a session experienced any technical challenge, candidates in subsequent sessions would be allowed to sit their examination as scheduled, while the candidates in the challenged session would be rescheduled for the last session of the day, the following day, or even further, depending on the centre schedules.
“Candidates are to take note of this so that they will remain calm in the event of any disruption. In this way, any candidate or parent who disrupts any subsequent session on account of the failure of his/her session would be disqualified outright from taking the examination,” it added.
