GRAPHITTI NEWS COMMENT: The Disorder And Confusion Over Reprinting Of JAMB Examination Slips

The sheer chaos and pandemonium witnessed at various offices of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board nationwide last week as students and parents/guardians came to collect registration/examination details for the forthcoming Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) due to JAMB's inability to promptly and efficiently release the examination date and centre slips to candidates was shameful and undignifying.
COMMENT continues:

Hundreds of candidates seeking to write the 2015/16 Computer-Based Test (CBT) of the University Matriculation Examinations (UME) staged protests at different centres across the country against the delay and non-issuance of the examination date and centre e-slips. This was for an examination that was billed to take place only a few days away.

On the other hand the whole exercised smacked of deliberately "engineered" commotion, designed to fleece prospective candidates. Or else what was the essence of "computerizing" the process of registration and making candidates register online only for access to the same website to become impossible but for the JAMB offices and some business centres. This kind of scenario only breeds inefficiency and corruption.

The exploitative tendencies in the Nigerian social space was in full display as "smart" business people sought to make profit at the expense of candidates by charging higher rates, between N200 - N500, for reprinting e-slips above the N100 charged at JAMB offices.

What has become manifestly clear is that simply going through the motions of "computerizing" processes and steps for registering and administering the UTME is not guaranteed to exclude effective organization nor is it a magic wand solution if the underpinning steps are not well planned and sincere.  The candidates for the UTME who are clients to the JAMB monopoly deserve better. Improved quality of service and good customer relations ought to become phrases with meaning with the management of JAMB.

JAMB has conducted the matriculation examinations long enough to know the kind of challenges to expect and how to tackle them without subjecting their candidates to the anguish they went through last week just to receive basic information regarding the examination. 

The mistake or whatever it was that caused the crisis was indefensible and must be prevented in future. 
The hue and cry over falling standards of education should not preclude service providers to the education sector from subjecting themselves to rigorous service delivery audits so they do not compound an already appalling situation.

GRAPHITTI  NEWS COMMENT WITH INPUTS FROM THISDAY POLITICAL NOTES