The female candidate who sat her Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination at the Bafuto Institute, Ile-Iwe Bus Stop, Ejigbo, Lagos, was said to have been asked to remove her head cover during the accreditation process before being allowed into the examination hall.
Addressing the issue in a statement signed by the Head of Public Affairs, Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB said it deeply regretted the incident, adding that upon investigation, it discovered that the incident or others in the past were not linked to any of its examinations guidelines, but rather a product of the misplaced priority by some of the accredited partners.
The report has it that JAMB’s guidelines on accreditation ensure that all candidates are screened and allow only female officials to screen female candidates before allowing them to gain entry into the examination hall.
“This situation was instantly addressed by a senior official of the board at the centre and the candidate in question was allowed in after the usual checks with her hijab.
“However, since ignorance of the law is not an excuse, the officials have been appropriately sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to others who might wish to toe the same line going forward.
“It’s worthy of note that the board, as a national institution, has no policy barring candidates from spotting the religious paraphernalia peculiar to their religious persuasions, as these are the facts of everyday life in Nigeria, which everyone should have been familiar with by now,” JAMB said in the statement.
It assured the general public that the issue would be properly investigated, as it had done in past incidents, to prevent a recurrence.
“The board is committed to the discharge of its statutory role of ensuring that suitably qualified candidates are selected for admission into the nation’s tertiary institutions and would not allow anything or anyone to detract it from the pursuit of this noble goal,” it said.
Meanwhile, the conduct of the 2024 UTME, which commenced on Friday, April 19, 2024, has been marred with reports of technical glitches, as over 1.2 million candidates are expected to have successfully taken the examination by Monday, April 22, 2024.
By Deborah Tolu-Kolawole
