It's no longer news that JAMB has admitted the glitches in its last UMTE exam
The examination body came out openly to confess to Nigerians that contrary to it's initial statement that many students that took the exam failed, JAMB itself had issues of its which many Nigerians never knew about
I had a premonition that something would go wrong with this year's UMTE
Two weeks to the exam , JAMB released notifications for what it called MOCK EXAM and directed all students to go to designated centres across Nigeria for the exam
My daughter was a candidate and so as early as 6am on that Saturday , I drove her to her centre somewhere in Ogba Lagos
The exam was to commence at 8am but knowing Lagos and it's unpredictable traffic, I decided to leave home early, even ordinarily the journey ought not to take me more than 20 minutes
On arrival, the place was already full with the candidates .
The students were ushered into the hall early enough . That was when the problem started .
By 10am , the exam that ought to have started 8am have not commenced
We were worried, we made enquiries but no one was telling us anything.
After sometime ( 12 noon ) , an official at the centre ( OAK Education Centre, Ogba ) came to inform us that they were having network issues that it will soon be resolved
To cut a long story short , we waited till 5pm ( almost 11 hours since I arrived) the problem was not resolved
We all had to pick our children in disappointment and left the venue
No mock Exam and no one got back to us on what happened or other options
Reports were made to JAMB but there was no reply
Part 11
On the day of the actual exam , I arrived the venue early at ( WAEC Conference hall Ogba ) with my daughter
Accreditation was seamless this time , examination started on time
My daughter told me everything went on smoothly, the exam hall was beautiful, the computers worked effectively
I was full of expectations, knowing fully well that she has what it takes to pass the exam
The Day I went to pick her from her boarding school, her principal called me to his office
He said sir , I have to requests to make of you
I said go ahead sir.
He said
1. Promise me that you'll return her back to school the day after her exam ..I said that's not a problem
2. Your daughter is owing me 315 marks .I asked him how ?
He said that is what I am expecting from her JAMB , she is one of our most brilliant students and so that is my expectation of her .
I smiled and said ,young hope you've heard what you principal said and she said yes
Result
To my surprise, when the result was eventually released, she was credited with 150 as her scores
I thought it was a mistake and rechecked and it was the same result
Ofcourse instantly I knew something was wrong
This was a girl who wrote her GCE last year in SS2 at the age of 15 and made 5As , 2Bs and 1c
So how come 150 .
I rejected the result instantly, the principal was calling me to find out her result, I couldn't tell him
Because telling him would mean him relating it same to my daughter who is currently writing her WASC .
The psychological effect on her will be too much
How will she read her choice course of Law with 150
We all know our children's capabilities, there is no way she could score 150
To me she was way above her elder sister who made a First Class in Computer Science few years back , when she was in her position in the same school
Good sense prevailed and Prof Oloyede came out to say there were some glitches in some centres in Lagos
I was praying that her centre should be one of them
Few days later, we got a notice that she will rewrite the JAMB within 3 days
I went back to school to pick her
It was then i told her , her initial score which she rejected
Some of her classmates had same issues but some of their parents didn't handle it properly
They abused their kids for the " abysmal performance "
Anyway finally her latest result was released and she scored 297 ( three numbers short of 300)
This was acceptable me 😃😀, if she could prepare for the current exam within 2 days and score that high, you could imagine what she would have scored in her initial exam
A lot of moral lessons learnt
Always know the capacity of your children and support them through and through
Oga Oloyede, you do me this one , you almost bursted my blood veins
Chris Kehinde Nwandu is Executive Editor CKNNews