The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said arrangements have been concluded to have an interaction with owners of Computer Based Test (CBT) centres in the country ahead of the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).

This disclosure was made by JAMB’s Head, Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, in a statement on Monday, adding that the meeting which comes up today at the University of Lagos is to fine-tune all areas of challenges geared towards conducting a hitch-free examination in 2017.

According to the statement, the meeting would determine the number of centres to be used for the 2017 all CBT (UTME) exercise. It said “These are centres that must have a minimum of 250 and above terminals (computers). We will not hesitate to disqualify any centre that falls short of the requirements.’’

“We will equally not compromise on the selection of these centres as they will fully be responsible for our registration and examinations and other related responsibilities that they will be saddled with from time to time as we introduce new measures,’’ It added.

The statement also noted that the board decided to come face to face with owners of the centres to ensure it got first-hand information on the challenges they were faced with in the course of the examinations.

The statement quoted the board’s Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede as saying “As partners in progress, we need to sit down on a roundtable and tell each other the truth so as to get to the root of all the hiccups. We should all feel concerned even if it was just one centre that had challenges or hitches during the conduct of the last examination. Nigerians expect a lot from us and we must strive not to fail them. We are looking at strengthening what was done holistically to improve on the previous exercises,’’.

It added that the board was committed to giving Nigerians globally accepted standard in the conduct of the examinations.

The statement said that the board would commence the sale of application forms soon and urged prospective candidates not to patronise any self-acclaimed agent as the board had not and would not appoint any.

The board urged candidates to always visit the JAMB’s website for accurate and reliable information.