Nahimah Ajikanle Nurudeen
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has been rated 90 percent on the conduct of the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) by the owner of Balad Computer Based Test (CBT), centre.
Alhaji Aliu Alade Bello, a.k.a Balad who is also the proprietor of the Balad Schools, Isawo Road, Agric, Ikorodu said the commendation was based on JAMB’s achievements in curbing malpractices in the ongoing UTME.
According to him, “There has been a lot of improvement been an IT thing, one should expect that there will be some issues in some centers as it used to happen in the past. But, I will rate at about 80 to 90 percent, the remaining 10 will be for the little issues in some centers.”
He noted that people should also realize that the current management in JAMB is a new administration, “they are trying to bring in some changes and improvements.”
Bello disclosed that though, things have always been fine with at Balad centre since the commencement of UTME because of its new 100kva generator, there is cooperation with other CBT centres in Ikorodu saying that, “we have like almost seven of us, what we do is that, if there is issues in any of the centers, we partner with them, unless we are not aware.”
He said Balad was able to run seamlessly because, the centre doesn’t depend on DISCO power.
Bello said, “We run our generator throughout, we have not had any case of not starting as expected. Everything has been successful, by 2:00 to 2:30, our students are done, the three batches are done. So far, no any challenge.”
He said, for instance,”One of my administrators has gone to some centers as at Saturday to render assistance because this is a Nigerian thing, it is not just about your own center, it is about the success of Nigeria, the success of CBT for jamb is the success of Nigeria.
He cautioned Nigerians against looking for the failure of CBT to have a rethink, “we want a Nigerian of our own dream, that when we leave this earth, our children will be proud of us, we don’t want to leave a Nigerian that our children will criticise.”
“So, I appeal to those who have a negative mindset about the success of the CBT, that this is the best that can happen to Nigeria. From my own experience, right now i work with some corporate organisation, my own experience has shown that this has reduced malpractices. I also want to give it to jamb for their ability to reduce some cyber cafes in terms of hacking some of the questions, registering candidates wrongly as reduced.”
On the issue of network, Ballad said, “I will advice JAMB to look at dependence of network they are using like Airtel, MTN because some of the few challenges with JAMB servers have been based on network. Meanwhile, those networks work on our phones but, it’s not the same on their servers. My advice is that they should look for better platform than depending on external network like Airtel and MTN considering the traffic on them.”
He also urged to provide conducive environment at their centres, “my appeal to other CBT owners is that, we should not just be after money but the success of the CBT and they should not produce an atmosphere that is not conducive.”
