By John Ikani
The Senate is perfecting plans to amend the law establishing the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to enable it limit the age of candidates writing the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to 16 years and above.
This was made known by the Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Senator Akon Eyakenyi during the committee’s oversight visit to JAMB.
According to him, the committee had identified two major areas to be addressed in the proposed amendment for the exam body to function better.
Senator Eyakenyi said “Our own work is that of making laws, to legislate; we have identified two major areas that we need to go into the process of amending the act establishing JAMB. That’s the area of support we will give.
“Other than that, we also intend to pass on what we have seen today to the appropriate MDAs, the Federal Ministry of Education to ensure the support that JAMB needs is given to them.”
Eyakenyi also commended the board for the smooth conduct of the 2021 UTME, stating that the exercise was free from malpractice as each candidate had different questions to answer.
He went on to describe JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, as a round peg in a round hole, who knows his job.
Responding, the JAMB boss spoke on the general performance for UTME in 2021, noting that JAMB has been able to use the profile code and NIN to arrest the issue of multiple registration, adding that in 2021, NIMC supplied pictures of candidates in addition to the one captured by JAMB at the point of registration.
He said staff of the board were properly taken care of to avoid the temptation of colluding with fraudsters to commit malpractice while conducting its exercises across the country.
