Police fire shots at protesting UTME candidates

Hundreds of candidates wishing to sit for
Monday’sUnified Tertiary Matriculation
Examination escaped death in Jos after they were
fired at by policemen called to maintain law and
order.
This happened on Wednesday after they went
berserk following the inability of the authorities to
release examination slips to them.
The candidates had gathered at the Murtala
Mohammed Way office of the Joint Admission
and Matriculation Board following announcements
that they should come for the details of their
examination centres.
One of our correspondents gathered that the
candidates were asked by JAMB officials to leave
their slips and come back later to collect their
details.
However, the authorities were overwhelmed by
the sheer number of students who had converged
on the office.
The candidates were said to have become restive
when the staff of JAMB were very slow in
releasing the slips to them.
In the confusion that ensued, the officials closed
their offices and asked the candidates to come
back the next day. At this juncture, they became
enraged and started smashing doors and
windows of the offices.
The policemen were said to have fired gunshots
in the air to disperse the candidates.
One of the candidates, who identified herself as
Kemi, expressed dismay at the development,
saying that the officials were endangering their
lives. She said JAMB had chosen its office as the
only centre to get the information instead of
decentralising to other business centres.
She said many students would have been
knocked down by motorists fleeing from the
gunshots.
She said, “The huge number of candidates at the
office was enough to attract any suicide bomber
and in the event of any such incident, the
casualties would be monumental.”
The Police Public Relations Officer, DSP
Emmanuel Abuh, told one of our correspondents
that the police were called to maintain law and
order after the candidates became riotous.
He said, “The police only dispersed them because
they constituted a great danger to motorists
because the office is located at a major highway.”
Also, pandemonium engulfed the office of JAMB
in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital and the College
of Education, Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, as a
result of protests by the candidates and students
respectively.
While scores of candidates in Lokoja protested
against the alleged plan by JAMB workers to
cheat them by demanding extra charges than the
stipulated fees, the students in Ilorin on
Wednesday made attempts to disrupt
examinations being taken by their colleagues.
Our correspondent gathered that some people had
accused some workers in JAMB office in Lokoja
of demanding more than the prescribed fees.
It was gathered on Wednesday that the aggrieved
candidates stormed JAMB office in Phase 2
Lokoja and engaged the JAMB officials in a free
for all which led to the collapse of the entrance
gate.
One of the candidates, who spoke to journalists
in Lokoja on condition of anonymity, said during
the time they were purchasing the forms, JAMB
officials allegedly demanded extra fee of N700.
He said, “Ordinarily we can do the registration
online from any internet-based platform, but
because they wanted to extort that N700 from
each of the candidates, they gave the order.
“When it was time to check for our centres and
get the print outs for Saturday computer-based
test, they asked us to pay the money.”
The state JAMB Coordinator, Mr. Daniel Agbo,
was said to have sought the assistance of
officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence
Corps to bring the situation under control.

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