JAMB approves 30 centres for UTME in Lagos

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Friday said that it had approved 30 all computer based centres for the 2015 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Lagos State.

Beatrice Okorie , the Lagos coordinator of the board, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that this was a great improvement over the previous years when there were only five centres.

Okorie disclosed this when she was asked about the board’s level of preparedness ahead of next year’s matriculation examination slated for March 4, 2015.

The board had during the 2014 examination which comprised the Paper Pencil, Computer Based and the Dual Based modes, declared that it was migrating fully to an all computer based test.

The coordinator said that consequently about 30 centres fully equipped with the necessary systems, software and backups had been approved for the conduct of the examination against “the five we used to have before now”.

“Preparations are in top gear for next year’s matriculation examination. Everything is going as planned.

“We have been visiting various centres around the state to inspect what are on ground.

“So far, we are satisfied with about 30 centres that have been able to meet our requirements as they will ensure the smooth take off of the conduct of the examination.

“We will also like to say that more centres are still going to be approved and a case where there is an outright absence of the backups or the capacity for the existing ones are below expectation, we will advise for an immediate installation or a replacement.

“We do not approve any ICT centre with less than 150 computer sets,” she said.

Okorie said that there was no going back from the full migration to the Computer Based Test (CBT) mode.

“The board had put necessary machinery in place to ensure that there were enough centres for as many as candidates that would register for the examination,” she said.