JAMB AND ICT IN NIGERIA
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) is Nigeria's official entrance examination board for tertiary-level institutions. The examinations being administered are available for most students who choose to apply to Nigerian public and private Monotechnics, Colleges of Education, Polytechnics, and Universities. Most of these candidates must already have concluded their external examinations, administered either by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) or the Nigerian National Examinations Council (NECO).
By 1974, there were seven federal universities in the country. Every one of these existing universities conducted its own concessional examination and admitted its students. However, this system of admission revealed serious limitations and quite often wastes of resources in the process of administering the concessional examination, especially on the part of the candidates. The general untidiness in the uncoordinated system of admissions into tertiary institutions and the attendant problems were sufficient cause for concern to the committee of vice chancellors in Nigeria.
These problems had assumed new dimensions when by 1976, the then federal military government, under the leadership of General Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ, established six additional universities. Consequently, the government set up a national committee on university entrance under the chairmanship of Mr. M. S. Angulu to properly set up JAMB Examinations.
In the 2009 University Matriculation Exam, the grading system of the normally reputable examination body was subject to serious controversy when the overall performance was one of the poorest on records. Much to JAMB's embarrassment, it was later revealed that the machines which optically graded the papers had erroneous answers and the JAMB changed some student’s scores by as much as 15%.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Since the early 1980s, information and communication technology (ICT) has permitted people to participate in a world in which school, work, and other activities have been increasingly enhanced by access to varied and developing technologies. ICT tools have helped people find, explore, analyze, exchange, and present information—most importantly, without discrimination. When efficiently used, ICT can provide quick access to ideas and experiences from a wide range of people, communities, and cultures.
Education especially is another sector in Nigeria which ICT has improved with emphases on the students or learners who are the target. It is in the quest to rank Nigeria among the developed countries that Nigerian Examination bodies have introduced online examination enrollment for candidates, checking and recurrently writing of their examination in real time mode. It is also important to note that computer illiteracy in the country is still high in as much as the government is doing her best to see that it is reduced. Most of the Nigerians who claim to be computer literate cannot stand a practical test on computer operation especially the computer graduates.
JAMB as a Nigeria's official entrance examination board for tertiary-level institutions on top of ICT to see that the country achieve her year 2020 vision by introducing online candidate registration, checking and writing.
Moreover, online registrations in Nigeria has been challenging in spite the developmental policies and programmes geared towards ICT in the country. In response to government efforts individuals, organizations and government agencies has done well in advocating the transition of traditional transactions to computerized operations in order to make things easier in the country.
One may then ask, is this really helping matters? I.e. is the system of computers doing more good than harm to the populace? Many Nigerians have being pounding on these as challenges faced by the ICT sector in Nigerian economy. One thing to note about this is that, a system which is open for innovations and advancement must face challenges and it is these challenges that then proud for advancement or innovations for the system to be relevant for those that it has been designed for.
Education, which is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, or research is another way Nigeria is trying to accept the computer age. JAMB as an examination body is not left out in the role Education is playing in fusing ICT into the society; the students are on the other hand laying blames to the body for doing more harm than good in try to fuse the system in their examination. But before one should jump into argument on this matter, he/she should first of all look critically into some things like:
THE INTERNET
The internet as you all know is the interconnection of computers worldwide for the purpose of information and or resource sharing. The internet has infrastructures or essential components that enable one to access its resources effectively. This means that before you have access to the internet, you must have certain things before you are connected. This includes Internet Service Provider (ISP) and Computer hardware.
ISP
ISPs here are the company providing or delivery the internet services to individuals or organization for internet related business to strive. The service provided by ISPs is delivered in Packages and Ratios, a package a subscriber subscribes to and the ratio he has paid for greatly determines his/her internet service speed or data transfer. These services are sometimes not delivered to the subscribers as it should due to the fact that the ISP has a middle man called an agent who stands in between the individual or the organization subscribing for the service and the ISP.
ISPs agents are sometime the cause of challenges we encounter during online transactions as they provide higher prices above the ISP price to the business owners and this makes the subscriber of the service to go for lower bits to minimize cost and on the other hand maximize profit. Moreover, they sometime don’t even pay to the ISP as scheduled so this sometimes leads to internet service disconnection without prior notice. The agent kind of ISP is mostly found in Very Small Aperture Terminal (Vsat) Internet services.
GSM ISPs in Nigeria introduced Internet services to customers which majority of the citizens thought that it would be a substitute to Vsat but could not as it is characterize with issues of Network not available for many days due to reasons they don’t even tell. Their network service cannot even be compared with Vsat in as much as Vsat Internet services cost very high to compare to their prices.
In Nigeria especially, businesses would always see profit before service so this in turn suffers the society in this regard as cyber cafés/ICT centers in Nigeria do not have access to effective and reliable internet services. This is either as a result of an ISP agent giving his own prices above the ISP price or the management of such organization collecting huge amount of money for internet subscription but paying for a very slow bandwidth or internet package and ratio.
The customers at the receiving end suffers mostly when they need such services but could not get it especially during online examination registrations that needs strong internet bandwidth or speed. E.g. JAMB online registration portal have high traffic during registrations as all over Nigeria if not the whole world tries to access the portal. In this case any cyber café, ICT centre or unit that has a slow internet services would find it difficult to access it.
Many people then jump into conclusion that JAMB cannot offer effective online transactions for different reasons without knowing that the problem is from the owners of the business in which the registration is taking place.
COMPUTER HARDWARE
Computer hardware are computer accessories that are connected together to form a computer system for solving a particular problem.
A computer can be used online and offline, in any case there are hardware specification for handling jobs being it online or offline. Online computers for instance should be computers of high processing elements but in Nigeria, because everyone wants to introduce computer related business in their ventures, they go on any computer they come across without checking to see whether the computer can stand online challenges.
For an online related business to strive, computer accessories (hardware) specification is very important. That is why many online registrations would require biometry machines like finger print scanner. JAMB which uses this device in online examination registration in Nigeria has created endless discussion in Nigeria, many say JAMB is always unable to store, process and verify candidate finger prints. The question is how do you know that it is the fault of JAMB?
JAMB on her part has given finger print scanner machine specification her portal would recognize, firmware for the device on different operating systems and different ways of verifying finger prints on their portal.
Before one should lay blames on JAMB for issues experienced on their portal during registration let us again understand the poor power supply in the country that is swift off in the middle of online registrations especially JAMB, Bandwidth issues in our internet service subscription and personnel experience on hardware and software installation and maintenance.

CONCLUSION
Online Registration system introduced by Nigerian Examination bodies is a welcome development and is doing more good than harm to the society. Introducing a new system is always challenging both on the side of the developers and the end users. Nigeria as a developing nation should put heads together to see that ICT grows to an enviable height in the country through manpower development.
RECOMMENDATIONS
JAMB should ensure they don’t only collect money from the said JAMB accredited online registration centres and just pass-by as a form of supervision but should properly inspect to see that the accredited registration centres subscribes to a specific internet service bandwidth that would be able to access their portal without errors on page as a result of internet failure.
Moreover, the personnel handling the registration should not be just computer operators but should as a matter of fact receive training from JAMB on how to tackle issues on their portal when the need arises.
Written by GANDE-IGBEH. EL
NCE-Computer Science/Economics