No fewer than ninety students, who registered for the just concluded examination conducted by the Joint Administration and Matriculation Board, JAMB, yesterday protested along the major streets of Abakaliki over their inability to participate in the exams.
The students claimed that they were denied opportunity of writing the exams in some of the centres in the state.
The leader of the protesters, who identified herself as Okorie Felicia, said that the situation worsened when the candidates were split into two at the Stella Maris Centre in Ohaukwu local government area of Ebonyi State as there was insufficient space.
She noted that the hall and available computers could not accommodate all the students, lamenting that after the first session, there was no time to conduct the exams for the second batch.
The protesters also included other candidates who alleged of what they described as “mysterious” disappearance of their results in the Board website after it had been reportedly released.
They carried placards with various inscriptions such as: “JAMB don’t frustrate our academic pursuit; we are disappointed in JAMB; we were denied exams after registration; JAMB release our results”, among others.
Okorie noted that the JAMB officials told them to wait that their exams would be rescheduled since there was no space and computers to accommodate them but that did not happen.
She said: “we were supposed to have our exams on March 10, 2018 by 9 a.m. About 95 of us were asked to wait that we will write our exams before another segment by 1pm. We waited patiently but those accommodated in the 9 a.m segment extended to the afternoon exams. Since them, the JAMB officials have not done anything to reschedule the exams for us”.
Another candidate, Ugwu Peter said: “my own case is that I checked my result and I scored 274 but on going to print the result, no mark was found. I screenshot the result on my phone but it disappeared when I went back to print it out. Nobody has told me what happened since then and I am afraid of what may have happened to the result.”
When contacted, the Ebonyi State JAMB Coordinator, Mrs Jane Iheme said she was not aware of any protest by the candidates, asking “where did you say the candidates protested? If you want to publish what happened, go ahead,” she stated.
Comentarii