A total of 61 physically challenged candidates, including blind persons, sat for the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), organised by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Enugu centre under the JAMB Equal Opportunity Group (JEOG) yesterday.
Participants at the examination held at the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus (UNEC), were drawn from nine states in the southeast and south-south regions, namely: Imo, Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, and Bayelsa states.
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The candidates included those with blindness, autism, Down syndrome, and other challenges that saw the candidates writing with all sorts of writing aids depending on their disability, such as brailles, typewriters, and stylos while some others wrote with pens.
Addressing journalists on the exercise, the coordinator of the UTME Blind Enugu Centre, Prof. Mosto Onuoha explained that JAMB had introduced the blind UTME programme to give people with special needs equal opportunity to achieve their dreams of going to the university or other higher institutions of learning.
Onuoha, who is a former deputy vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), and former president of the Nigeria Academy of Science, said: “What is important is that JAMB recognizes that people should have opportunities, especially the physically challenged.
“This is a different kind of exam because they can’t do computer-based tests (CBT).
“We read the questions for them and the options. They provide the answers. The only difference is that we extend their time for them.”
Another member of the committee and provost, Federal College of Education (Technical), Isu, Ebonyi State, Prof. Okey Okechukwu, disclosed that in order to encourage and motivate the candidates, JAMB took care of their transportation, feeding, and accommodation for three days with those of their guides, starting from Sunday when they arrived until Wednesday when they would depart for their various states.
Okechukwu used the opportunity to call on the governors of the Southeast and South-South, the local government area chairmen, and traditional rulers to create awareness among people with disabilities to enable them to access services of the JAMB.
He noted that with adequate awareness, especially among parents of disabled persons, more candidates would be motivated to sit for the JAMB examinations.
“I’m using this opportunity to appeal to the governors in the Southeast and their South-South counterparts to create awareness so that many parents will get to know this kind of arrangement JAMB has put in place to encourage and motivate them, so that we get more candidates in the future,” Okechukwu said.