UTME should be returned to Pencil-paper mode – House of Reps.
Members of the House of Representatives passed a resolution on Thursday seeking for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board to return the method of conducting the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) back to the pencil-paper method.
The green chamber alternatively called for the conduct of computer-based tests and pencil-paper examinations simultaneously for candidates to opt for anyone of their choice.
This is coming after a lot of controversy trailed the 2016 Computer-based UTME, as candidates lamented disparities and incorrect results assigned to them.
Moving the motion on the “conflicting” scores of candidates who took the 2016 UTME, Mr. Oghene Emma-Egoh (Lagos State), said that the “technical flaws” recorded in the exam had exposed JAMB’s lack of capacity to handle the computer-based tests.
The lawmaker cited the case of one Foluke, a 17-year-old girl in Ejigbo-Lagos, who scored an aggregate of 156 in the first result, while in the result that later came out, she had an aggregate of 196.
He noted that besides the conflicting scores resulting from the technical flaws, it was obvious that many candidates could not pass the examination for the simple reason that they were not computer-literate.
Emma-Egoh argued that the implication was that the hopes of many intending students had been dashed due to the technical errors and their inability to use computers.
