Boko Haram forces JAMB to cancel UTME exams in Borno, others

The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Dibu Ojerinde, has said there will be no Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in the volatile states in northern Nigeria.

Mr. Ojerinde made the announcement on Friday in Abuja while speaking with reporters at the 58th National Council on Education (NEC) meeting. 
According to him, JAMB will be forced to cancel the examination if the Boko Haram attack on primary and secondary schools in Borno State continues. 
“When we reviewed the situation in volatile states, for instance Borno, we realised that some of the schools are being bombed but our investigations showed that only primary schools are affected and not secondary schools.
“The board will be left with no option than to tell the candidates to go elsewhere to write the exams if schools which serve as centres are attacked,’’
The registrar regretted that the development could be quite unfortunate for the students.
Mr. Ojerinde disclosed that the board had increased the number of examination towns from 328 to 379 while the number of centres also increased from 2,872 to 3,052.
He said that the teething problem that greeted the use of biometric data machines in 2011 had been addressed, adding that the biometric machines would take only 30 to 40 minutes to verify the entire 540 candidates registered for a centre.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Boko Haram had on Feb. 28, attacked four primary schools in Maiduguri, setting the Gomari Costain Primary School and a section of the Maiduguri Experimental School, Kawanar on fire.
They also set ablaze Budum Kulo Gomna Primiary Schools and Abba Ganaram Primary School also in Maiduguri.