Association of Educational Services and Cyber Café Operators has tasked the Chairman, Senate Committee on Ethics, Code of Conduct and Public Petitions, to probe the recent restriction of applicants’ registration for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board to only Computer Based Test centres approved by the board.
The group described the policy, announced by JAMB on its website, as constituting discrimination against cyber cafés run by small and medium scale owners in favour of JAMB-accredited CBT centres owned by big-time businessmen.
The lawyer to the group, Mr. Femi Aborisade, stated that though the association agrees with the policy’s underlying principle of establishing standards for UTME venues, but disagrees with JAMB ‘s desire to commodify the process by handing a huge advantage to wealthy owners of JAMB-accredited CBT centres. The association said its in disagreement with the new policy stems from its exclusionary nature.
“UTME applicants should be allowed to register for the examination from their individual computer units and/or those owned by their parents and guardians rather than be compelled to patronize CBT centres. Where some individual applicants do not have their own computer units, such applicants should be allowed to exercise the freedom to patronize either a CBT centre or the cyber cafés,” said AESCCO.
The group explained that this will ensure that everybody involved in the process, regardless of economic status, is treated equally.
While conceding that small scale cyber café owners may be involved in examination-related fraud, AESCCO argued that owners of big CBT centres are not exactly free of such dubious tendencies.
“In other words, the tendency to compromise systems exists in all areas of businesses, regardless of scale and status of their proprietors. The challenge for JAMB is to establish strong control and security safeguards to monitor, identify and punish all fraudulent acts, wherever established, whether by a CBT centre or a cyber café,” it contended.
AESCCO further argued that aside from being discriminatory, the exclusion of cyber cafés, which were initially accredited by JAMB in preference to CBT centres, is unconstitutional.
AESCCO observed that if the new policy excluding its members from the registration process is implemented, it will lead to chaos in the system. According to the association, the jump in the number of UTME applicants to over one million (as at 2015, according to JAMB figures) will place an enormous strain on the CBT centres except the cyber cafés are there to take away some of the pressure. It wondered why JAMB is seeking to be different from other local and international institutions, which conduct registration online.
The body said if the new JAMB policy is not rescinded, it will worsen unemployment in the country and increase crime rate, as the children of cyber café operators will drop out of school because their parents would have been forced out business
