The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it will no longer conduct bulk exams for Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidates who are not biometrically verified.
The Executive Board made the announcement in its weekly bulletin of the Chancellor’s Office in Abuja on Monday.
It said the move was to further tighten the noose around exam errors.
“The Board has decided that the era in which some candidates present themselves at the exam site and claim biometric verification difficulties and expect the system to allow them to sit the exam is finally over.
“It will be recalled that the Board generosity allowed such candidates to be deferred for the mop-up UTME launched in 2017.
“However, the Board has recently recognized the futility of such an order after assessing the process and its impact on the entire audit value chain.
“Consequently, the Board has regrettably decided that all candidates must be verified in order to sit their exam as for whatever reason there will be no more mop-ups UTME.
“To accommodate those few who may have genuine instances of inability to be captured, such candidates must clearly state those difficulties from the time of registration.
“This is so that they can be assigned to a center within the national headquarters of the Board for close monitoring,” it said.
The Bulletin noted that the action was not only to clean up the audit process, but also to ensure that the committee’s hard-earned reputation was not called into question.
JAMB said the decision arose from management’s rigorous review of the UTME exercise 2022, with the need to close any loopholes identified during the review.
“Exam errors remained one of the biggest obstacles faced by all public exam bodies worldwide, hence the need for them to take rigorous steps to confront the monster.
“No UTME candidate may take the exam without first being biometrically verified. All 10 fingers of the candidate must be captured at the time of registration.
“To combat the risk of exam errors, the Board has taken full advantage of the technology, including by introducing biometric capture of a candidate’s 10 fingers during UTME enrollment.
“This is to ensure that there is a convincing match between the fingerprints taken and those presented by the candidate at the exam location,” it said.
The board said that any scenario other than the above is an invitation to investigate a security breach.
Management has scheduled a five-day annual retreat from September 18-23 to review and evaluate its performance across all facets of its operational processes, including the UTME 2022.
“This serves to assess the challenges and fashion strategies for addressing them, while providing a way forward,” JAMB said.
