The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said on Monday that its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) would be computer-based from 2015.
Speaking at an Advocacy campaign on Computer-based Test (CBT) in Akure, JAMB Registrar, Prof Dibu Ojerinde said, “2015 is the end of all paper test. Everybody will have to do computer based test come 2015. Any person who can use the mobile phone can also take part in the test.”
The Registrar also said that candidates in the 2014 UTME could still choose between CBT and the normal “pencil and paper” method. His words: “After 2014, there will be no option for any candidate to choose again. CBT is the key. The world is changing and technology has reached an advanced stage. The way to go now is technology, if we don’t want to remain in the same place.”
He also encouraged all students aiming to write exam in the near future to take advantage of the several Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities that abound in the country ahead of the deadline.
For Ondo state candidates who will write the JAMB exam in 2014, there’s no option than the CBT because there are presently enough facilities in the state. They include: FUTA centre, the Adeyemi College of Education (ACE), Ondo and the Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo.
Prof Ojerinde said concerning the security of the new electronic method: “You can only hack what you know in technology and unfortunately many people don’t know what we are doing here even the college we are using don’t know what we are doing and we do not go through their servers. We transfer it to the terminal and after the whole thing we take it back from our terminal. The only way to hack this is if you have our server which is not possible, because we have a procedure to protect our server.”
Not less than 100 secondary school students from 10 schools in Akure sat for a mock version of the CBT at the Information and Technology Resource Centre, Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA). All the candidates were able to view their results after the test before they logged out of the system.
