2024 UTME: Arrest any parent who comes near CBT centres – JAMB to security agencies

• Says any parent who disobeys the order would not only be arrested but his ward would be disqualified from sitting for the examination

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, (JAMB), has ordered all Computer-Based Test, CBT, centre owners to ensure the arrest of any parent found close to any of their facilities during the 2024 UTME exercise.

The Board’s spokesman, Fabian Benjamin, gave the directive at the final briefing of CBT centre owners, on Wednesday, saying that the directive became necessary following the intrusive disposition of some parents during the Board’s previous exercises.

Benjamin quoted JAMB’s Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, as saying that any parent who disobeys the order would not only be arrested but his ward would be disqualified from sitting for the examination.

“This measure is necessary as it has been discovered over time that many of these intruding parents are facilitators of examination infractions while others have, by their actions, disrupted the Board’s examinations in the past.

“Some miscreants also disguise themselves as parents to infiltrate the centres to perpetrate all forms of infractions,” he said.

Oloyede disclosed that the Board has directed security operatives to work with the centres to arrest any meddlesome parent, who comes near the centres, noting that going by the extant national policy on education, a candidate for the examination must have attained the age of 17 years.

“It is evident that these parents had not allowed their wards to pass through the classes as defined in the document, hence, the determination to follow their wards to the examination venue with the aim of compromising examination officials.

“At any rate, it is clear to any discerning observer that these parents deserve to be sanctioned as they had obviously ‘smuggled’ underage children into the ranks of those scheduled to sit the examination,” he added.

He, therefore, appealed to centre owners to consider the assignment as a national engagement and not as a purely profit venture, urging them to expose the bad eggs among them.