UTME: JAMB warns schools against confiscating candidates’ registration SIMs

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has raised concern over what it tagged the ‘unholy intrusion’ of the authorities of some elite schools, who confiscated the registration SIMs of their students.

The Board said unlike the West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO), etc., the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) Registration and Examination exercises are not school-based.

JAMB spokesperson, Dr FabianBenjamin, in a statement released late Sunday said: “As such, schools have no role whatsoever to play in these operational processes of the Board. This is because these exercises require only the participation and engagement of individual candidates.”

He said the Board had repeatedly warned authorities of elite schools to stop intruding into the operations of the Board so as not to negatively impact the future of their UTME candidates.

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He said: “According to reports, some elite schools are fond of hoarding the network SIM cards of UTME candidates in their schools, denying them access to their email addresses, their profile codes and, as such depriving them of the opportunity of receiving vital information from the Board.”

“It was also discovered in the ongoing examination that these schools also warehoused their candidates’ examination notification slips leading to many of these candidates missing their examinations owing to their inability to access their slips to know their exact examination schedules.”

Meanwhile, he said the evident in the various complaints sent to the Board from schools in Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Kano and others, reiterating the fact that the schools had denied the candidates the opportunity to receive vital information.

He urged parents to note that the UTME is a personal examination and is not to be handed to their children’s schools to manage.