Many candidates who sat for the maiden Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) are yet to see their results days after its stated release by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Friday, 23 April, 2010.
The results can only be checked online at www.jambonline.org, but many candidates have been having difficulty logging on to the site since its release, an experience they described as similar to that for the online application for the examination.
Announcing the results in Abuja, Dibu Ojerinde, Registrar of JAMB, said over 68 per cent of the 1,276,795 candidates that sat for the UTME passed; 96.23% of the results have so far been released. Over 1.3 million candidates had applied for the examination around the world.
Still waiting
“It’s not good at all that I can’t see my result since it was released on Friday; their site is just not going. After putting my data and clicking ‘done’, nothing happens. It’s their service that’s bad, because I’ve been trying other cafes too, but it’s the same thing,” said Sodiq Jimoh, a candidate who is also a computer operator at Sky touch Cyber cafe, along Isheri Road in Lagos.
Mr. Jimoh also pointed out that his inability to access the site in spite of his limitless access to the internet during the day, by virtue of his job, means the “situation must be really bad.”
“I feel very bad about it, me that I’m even working at a cafe from morning till 8pm can’t even access the result; it is very painful, and must be for others (other candidates) too,” Mr. Jimoh added.
Cyber cafes across Lagos, which are the major points of call for many of the candidates requiring internet access for the checking of results, have been experiencing the similar difficulties.
At Pop-com Cyber cafe, Ogba, where only one out of about 30 candidates has so far succeeded in checking the result, the system administration, Kazeem Adebayo, blamed JAMB for the continued delay experienced by candidates in checking their results.
“The problem is with JAMB site, because we’ve been visiting other sites, and no problem; it’s their site that is not okay. Anything Nigerian is not okay, at least hundreds of thousands of Nigerians visit facebook (an online social networking site) at anytime, and no problem or congestion,” said Mr. Adebayo.
Old woes haunting JAMB?
However, Opeyemi Callisto, who wants to read Economics, succeeded after several attempts and about N700 in charges for browsing time, but realised he had no result.
“It says that I should contact JAMB. There was a mix-up during the exam; I was supposed to sit for Economics, Government, and Mathematics, but the script that had my name and number on it was Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, I had to wait for about an hour for the supervisor to swap the script with another. We were about 20 (candidates) who had the same problem in my centre, so they had to swap scripts for us,” said Mr. Callisto, who sat for the examination at Tomia College, Alagbado in Lagos.
Interestingly, some of the candidates may have found a way out already, saying the situation is not as severe abroad.
“I have two friends who gave their data to relatives in places like Malaysia and Ghana to check for them. Now, that’s my plan; I will find someone in Ghana or Malaysia to check for me. Some are browsing overnight to check it, but I don’t trust that too, because many people are doing it overnight now, soon it will get congested too,” Mr. Jimoh said.
This can’t work
According to a ping test conducted by NEXT at 18.18 and 15.00 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, the site, www.jambonline.org was offline.
Cheta Nwanze, a computer engineer and Online Editor with NEXT, described the server hosting the JAMB website as incapable of coping with the increase in the number of users, saying JAMB can only change its host to prevent future occurrence.
“The website jambonline.org (196.200.123.38) was hosted on a server that cannot cope with the upsurge in traffic, that such a website should be able to cope with given the demand that a lot of users wanting to check their results imposes on the server,” Mr. Nwanze said.
However, attempts to reach Chinwe Ogbuka, the spokesperson of the examination board, were unsuccessful until the time of filing this report, as her number was unavailable.
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