JAMB Fights Varsities, says refund students if charge was above N2000 or get sued.

The Joint Admissions and
Matriculation Board, JAMB, on
Sunday, said it would partner with
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to
conduct public examination
through Computer Based Test, CBT,
for Nigerians abroad.
The examination board also said
universities that charged more
than N2,000 from applicants for its
post-UTME examination will be
made to refund the excess
payment.
JAMB’s Head of Public Relations,
Fabian Benjamin, made these
known in an interview with the
News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, in
Abuja.
Mr. Benjamin said that the
collaboration was to enhance the
conduct of Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination, UTME,
for foreign candidates in 2018.
He said 2017 UTME was conducted
for foreign candidates on
September 30 in Gambia, Saudi
Arabia, United Kingdom, Ghana,
Ivory Coast, Benin Republic,
Ethiopia, South Africa and
Cameroun.
According to him, although the
conduct of the examination was
not justifiable, in terms of
monetary value, there is need for
JAMB to collaborate, to promote
growth in the education sector.
“We are already promoting CBT in
line with international best
practices; we have taken it to
some countries in Africa, we need
to do more to encourage the
practice.
“We have even gone ahead to see
how we can put some countries
on the global map by conducting
our public examination there
through CBT.
“What we want to do is to partner with the
ministry to be able to key into the global
technology revolution as part of our foreign
policy.
“We must be able to maximise profit, especially
from West African countries that we are
offering assistance, through scholarship, to
school in Nigeria.
“We cannot achieve much by looking at things
from naira and kobo, but through diplomatic
relations there will be adequate room to gain
through conduct of examination abroad,” he
said.
The head of public relations explained that
foreign candidates sat for examination in one
session based on local time of their various
countries, adding that the questions were
deployed from the Board’s headquarters.
He decried message on the social media that
the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, had
directed the refund of post UTME fee,
describing the information as false and could
create confusion in the public domain.
Mr. Benjamin urged the public to disregard the
information, saying that institutions that had
charged more than N2,000 would be asked to
make refund of the excess.
He described as unfortunate a situation where
some institutions could not adhere to the
minister’ directive about the payment of post-
UTME.