By Innocent Oweh, CORRESPONDENT, Abuja


Impressed by the system of conducting examinations into Nigerian tertiary institutions, the Kenya government has indicated interest in copying the system adopted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

At the monitoring exercise of the maiden Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) recently, the Kenya Deputy Secretary for National Examination Council, Eddah Muiruri, who led a team of foreign observers noted that they were impressed by the arrangements put in place by JAMB for the examination.

She said Kenyan’s National Examination Council has a lot to learn from JAMB on how it conducts examinations.

“What we would really like us to adopt and admire is the e-registration that Nigeria is currently using, which we are not currently doing in Kenya. We are actually looking at that aspect so that we can start the e-registration when we go back to Kenya.”

She explained that there has been an understanding with all the examination bodies in Africa, noting that they have exchange programmes.

“When we conducted our examinations in Kenya, we invited them and they came and saw what we did and we benchmarked. They actually came and went through all the processes, the registration, the administration, the upgrading to the end and we are doing the same here,” he said.

A member of the team, Kennedy Abujeh, said Nigerian has done well in the area of e-registration, noting that candidates use scratch cards to register on-line, which Kenya is set to adopt.

While giving insight into why foreign observers came to monitor the examination, JAMB Registrar, Dibu Ojerinde disclosed that six weeks ago, chief executives of some examination bodies in Africa visited Nigeria to see how things were being done in the area of examination administration.

“They include those of Kenya, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Tanzania and we took them to our office.

They went round our office and they felt highly impressed that some good things are happening.”

I have equally been impressed by the conduct of the just concluded UTME exams, from the online registration system to the newly inducted invigilating style during exams, l, do you believe if a student accidentally misses his/her reg. number, the webmasters has a way of retrieving the number with just few questions to answer! Talk less of the one week release of the results. Una too much.

Jamb I like the innovation!

thumbs up,