Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, on Saturday, revealed that over 80 percent of candidates refused to show up for the mop up examination.
These are people who missed the earlier rescheduled Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, following a review by JAMB.
However, on Saturday, only about 12,000 of the over 90,000 candidates participated in the examination.
Speaking while monitoring the examination, Oloyede also accused parents of facilitating examination malpractices for their wards.
He hinted of plans to begin prosecution of such parents.
Lamenting the situation, the JAMB Registrar said parents are the major problem facing the conduct of public examinations as they found malpractices even to the detriment of their children.
"Parents found to be financing examination malpractice schemes for their children would soon face investigation and possible prosecution," he told reporters on Saturday.
Oloyede revealed that more than 80 percent of the 98,232 candidates eligible for the nationwide mop-up did not show up for the exercise.
He said it was not surprising especially when the Board has intensified security measures targeting impersonators and exam cheats.
“Every year, we do mop-up. And it is normally for about 4,000, 5,000 students, who for illness, for genuine excuse could not take the exam. Or who after review, we saw had technical problems in their centers. This is normally for about 4,000, 5,000. Every year we do that,” he said.
He explained that this year’s large mop-up pool was necessitated by allegations of widespread absences in the main examination.
According to him, the Board opted to give everyone a second chance, while also leveraging intelligence gathered from security agencies.
“So we now felt that it’s better to keep the door open as wide as possible. At least to apprehend impersonators.
“And then you can see that the performance (turnout) throughout the country is far, far below what you would expect.
“Those who even indicated coming out of the 90,000, there are about 12,000 plus,” he said.