Woe of 2019 Jamb Candidates; Who Is To Blame?   By Muhammad Auwal Suleiman

It is actually disheartening how undereducated we are becoming in a world of educated persons. It is expected that child should be encouraged to study so as to be able to make impact in the healthy growth of the society, but regrettably the story is something else in Nigeria as students are made to pass through hell to succeed which convincingly is doing  more harm than good to the society.

To take side is certain attribute of human being as far as the concept of “empathy” is in existence though with objectivity and balance. 

Putting into cognizance how students are been subjected to unwarranted sufferings from our indigenous examinations bodies will certainly leave anyone with an atom of hope for greater Nigeria in an utmost dismay and bewilderment.   

Remember 2018/19 NECO English Examination that lingered to 7pm in some states like Kano there were concrete and verifiable reports that students wrote English NECO examination to about 10:00pm, this is unfortunate. 

Now coming down to JAMB, I can vividly remember in 2017 there was a candidate who cried out fowl that he is been cheated in the result released, he said the subject he was graded high has even the subject that he did not even attempt. 

2019 JAMB is a serious setback and turnoff for so many students that are aspiring to go to the university because of how   they are disappointed for getting punished on offence they did not commit.

Nigeria has not yet arrived that stage that we can 100% rely on some technological devices. Biometric data capturing equipment can at any time fail due to some challenges that can be very difficult to solve looking at our complacency in that area. 

Hundreds of students were unable to seat for the exams due to biometrics data capturing equipment’s inability to capture their data and there was no alternative, as such those students helplessly missed the exams without any hope of either having another chance of writing the exams or having their registration money refunded and those students have sat for the mock examination have their biometric data captured and their result released which means their data is with JAMB.

Breach in communication is always giving birth to rumors that are tasking and usually very difficult for Public Relations Officers to control the damage created by the gap, therefor the inability of JAMB public relations department to effectively communicate with its publics have left a lot of students in sober.

The JAMBULLETIN release of Sunday that was captured by Punch Newspaper woke the sleeping dog as what the story is carrying is “22 candidates with biometric challenges to write exam at JAMB Abuja HQ” this has left a lot of secondary schools administrators, students and their parents with an open ended question of, who are these candidates, are they from special centers or are they the children of those that matters in the country i.e first hand indigenes? They are in a state of confusion as there is a traceable particular center where about 87 candidates with same biometric challenges have not been attended to as revealed by JAMB insider who requested for anonymity, some centers I came across with have 5and  some 22 candidates. The question remain,  why is the board preparing for only 22 and saying they have only 55 and only 22 came for registration when they asked the candidates to come. The big question is when did they ask these candidates to go to the board for registration?

Let us remember 2019 general elections and the number of persons that were disenfranchised due to challenges of biometrics.

Not only in conducting the examination, about 1,792,719 candidates sat for the examination and each student is mandated to use the sum of 50 naira worth recharge card in checking his/her result. Times N50 to 1,792,719 and see the amount of money the board generated from helpless Nigerian candidates.

I am hereby calling on JAMB to either recognize the complain of all candidates with biometric challenges and attend to them or cancelled the planned unholy and inhuman  act they are about to carryout.

Muhammad Auwal Suleiman

auwalsuleiman@gmail.com