The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has created 11 centres for Persons With Disability (PWDs) for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).
The Chairman, JAMB Equal Opportunity Group (JEOG) for the Abuja Centre, Prof. Sunday Ododo said this while addressing a news conference in Abuja on Friday.
Ododo commended the board’s Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede for the initiative to create the JEOG to give level playing ground for candidates sitting for UTME.
According to him, JAMB was aware of candidates with special needs who may not favourable compete with candidates without special needs.
”From 2017 till date, JEOG has processed over 2,600 candidates from these special community for the UTME.
”In 2019, out of the 390 special candidates that sat for the exam, 175 candidates were given admission.
“In 2020, 89 of the 351 special candidates that sat for the UTME got admissions.
”In 2021, a total of 110 blind candidates were given admission, out of the 332 that sat for the UTME.
” In 2022, 139 candidates gained admissions out of the 364 candidates that wrote the examinations.
However, there is no favouritism in testing these candidates,” he said.
Ododo added that JEOG was initially created for virtually impaired candidates alone but it now catered for persons with albinism, down syndrome and those with attention deficit hyper active disorder.
”Before 2017, PWDs write the same examination with those without disabilities within the same time frame.
” But there were challenges which was why Oloyede created the group to address these challenges,” he added.
