The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), says it has no policy barring candidates from sporting the religious paraphernalia peculiar to their religious persuasions.
The board stated this in a statement on Sunday while reacting to the alleged harassment of a female Hijab-wearing candidate during the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UMTE) at Bafuto Institute, Ile-Iwe Bus Stop, Ejigbo, Lagos, on Saturday.
Officials of the board were said to have asked the female candidate to remove her hijab during the accreditation process before being allowed into the examination hall.
The female candidate was said to have refused to remove the hijab, leading to a scuffle with the officials.
However, reacting on the issue, JAMB in the statement signed by its
Head of Public Affairs, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, expressed regrets over the incident, saying some officials had been sanctioned over the harassment of the female candidate.
The statement said investigations showed that “the incident or others in the past were not linked to any of its examination guidelines but rather a product of the misplaced priority of some of the board’s accredited partners or officials who claimed ignorance of the its guidelines on accreditation.”
According to Benjamin, the situation was instantly addressed by a senior official of the board at the centre and the candidate in question was allowed in the exam hall after the usual checks with her hijab.
“However, since ignorance of the law is not an excuse, the officials have been appropriately sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to others, who might wish to toe the same line going forward.
“It is worthy of note that the board, as a national institution, has no policy barring candidates from sporting the religious paraphernalia peculiar to their religious persuasions as these are the facts of everyday life in Nigeria, which everyone should have been familiar with by now”, the statement said.
JAMB assured members of the general public that the issue would be properly investigated so as to prevent a recurrence.
The statement added that, “The board is committed to the discharge of its statutory role of ensuring that suitably qualified candidates are selected for admission into the nation’s tertiary institutions and would not allow anything or anyone to detract it from the pursuit of this noble goal”.
Meanwhile, the conduct of 2024 UTME, which commenced on Friday, April 19, 2024, has been marred with reports of technical glitches as over 1.2 million candidates would have successfully taken the examination by Monday, 22nd April 2024.
