JAMB issues fresh guidelines ahead 2023 UTME

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said all Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres must henceforth use laptops running on at least 2 gigabytes (2GB) RAM for the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) tests.

The board has also barred CBT centres from collaborating with cyber cafes or tutorial centres, saying “any violation of the directive, whether in part or whole, would lead to the revocation of the licence of the erring CBT centre.”

JAMB also announced that it would consider separating UTME registration from that of Direct Entry (DE) beginning in 2023.

These are parts of the fresh guidelines rolled out by the board as contained in its weekly bulletin published on Monday.

The new developments were made known at the end of a five-day retreat held in Abuja between Monday, 19th and Friday, 23rd September, it said.

JAMB said: “No new Computer-Based Test (CBT) centre would be accredited without meeting the new requirements. To this end, new CBT centres must use laptop computer systems as clients, zero thin clients or Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) would no longer be accepted.

“It became necessary for the board to modify its operations towards achieving far-reaching improvements on various issues emanating from the registration process, biometric challenges, and other operational procedures.”

For the accreditation of the CBT centres, JAMB said it would introduce three mandatory autobot tests –pre-accreditation, during Mock-UTME and the dummy examination (which is held a day before the UTME) – to confirm the readiness of the centres.

“Another key reason for the decision was the need to prevent IP address duplication and abuse,” it said.

JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, also stated that biometrics of all accredited CBT centre registration officers would be captured ahead of the exercise.

JAMB also said candidates must use at least two fingers to print their registration slip. “Any of the two fingers taken would be used for biometric verification prior to entering the examination hall on the day of the examination,” it said.

At the registration point, candidates with bad fingerprints would be scheduled for the examination as “Exemption Candidates” and their registration slips would be colour-coded to be different from those of other candidates.

JAMB said such candidates would sit their examination in Abuja on the last date of the national examination calendar and that their results would not be released until after being subjected to proper scrutiny.

Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.