How My Brother, 425 Others Were Affected After Obafemi Awolowo Varsity Rescheduled Entry Exam Without Notifying Candidates —Aggrieved Nigerian

A man simply identified as Kayode has called out the Information and Communication Technology Department of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), claiming the school rescheduled the entry examination without notifying candidates.

 

Kayode told SaharaReporters that about 425 candidates were affected by a technical problem in the online examination which made it impossible for them to submit successfully.

According to him, his younger brother is one of the affected candidates and had assumed the quiz had been submitted after he got logged out of the examination portal.

Kayode said, unknown to him and other candidates, the school silently rescheduled the examination without any form of notification, either by email or text message.

He said neither was the information posted on the school’s website or social media.

He said he only got to discover by 2 pm on Monday that the young man had been rescheduled for a 9 am examination on the same day which was only stated on the portal.

The aggrieved man said he visited the school to resolve the issue and see if his brother could be rescheduled.

According to him, one of the staff members at the ICT department of the school told him that his brother’s previous examination would be used to assess him.

He, however, said information on the school’s portal showed the young man was absent when they tried to check his score.

Kayode added that when he visited the school, one of the directors of the ICT department told him over 425 candidates were affected and there was no solution to it as they missed the rescheduled examination.

He said it was unjust that someone who had sat for the examination initially was being made to pay for the technical error that had come from the ICT department.

He also said the director told him 17, 000 candidates sat the examination.

He said, “My brother applied for Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in OAU, I sent him to do the registration and when they wanted to do it, they gave a notice of two weeks. And before he sat the online examination, they were given the guidelines. His examination was on Wednesday but after doing it and he wanted to submit, there was an error, it blocked him off. By virtue of that, he assumed it had been submitted autonatically, so he didn’t bother to even complain.

“On Friday, we didn’t check but on Saturday, I logged on to the portal to check if they had posted the result. I didn’t see anything. On Monday, I wanted to check the portal again for the result but I noticed they had rescheduled his examination for Monday around 9am and I checked at 2pm. This was on the portal, they didn’t notify us. I input my phone number and email address, no single notification from them.

“The first time, they notified me on phone. I got a text message but this time around, nothing. When I saw that he had missed the rescheduled examination, I went to the school and informed them at the ICT but a man there said they had actually rescheduled some people but he said it was possible that they would mark the other examination for him so I said okay.

“This week now, the result is out but it was written ‘absent’ on his portal. I had to go back to the ICT section of the school and met one of their directors who confirmed that they were the ones who rescheduled the examination on Friday evening. I said when you rescheduled them, why didn’t you notify those you rescheduled. He said how did they know the first time? I said he gave them two weeks, and this one just how many days. I asked him how many were affected, he said they are about 425 students, so I told him that those who didn’t go for the real examination, you gave them another opportunity while those that sat for it initially but due to some technical issues (which is the fault of the school) were not informed of the rescheduled date for their examination. Can you see the injustice? He said they cannot do it again.

“He made a very useless submission that 17, 000 people sat the exam. But he never told me how many people he rescheduled because that 17, 000 figure is irrelevant. I asked him to tell me how many were rescheduled and came because one of my friends, his brother also missed the examination so the fault is from them (the school).

“When you reschedule, you notify the person, there is a number there and we also have our email address with them but they didn’t do that. If they had written us through email or sent a message, it would have been better and the man said nothing can be done. Over 400 persons are affected and he can’t do anything. We paid N3, 500 for this examination and my brother told me that out of 40 questions, he is very sure of scoring 25 while from the rest, he can get about about 5 or 6 questions correctly and for OAU, if he can score 25 marks or upwards, he is eligible for admission. Not everyone has connections.

“On Friday, that the man rescheduled. The people who ought to take that day, he cancelled them, he didn’t allow them. If you go to their website, you won’t see anything like rescheduling, it is until you enter the portal.

“In 2019, my brother had selected another school before but as he scored 256, he changed to OAU but OAU did not accept the change.

“Now that he has chosen the school and taken the Post-UTME, they now said he was absent. And the man was giving the excuse of rescheduling. When you reschedule someone, how about the previous one he did? My brother said when he was taking the exam, he knew they were monitoring them as he was being prompted to adjust his camera.

“They denied 425 people because of their own mistake. Why didn’t they even post it on Facebook? If it was on social media, within 2 hours, everyone would have been aware, and the man claimed he is a professor of communications.”