My JAMB Experience
Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board better know as JAMB is a Nigerian entrance examination board for tertiary-level institutions. This board is responsible for conducting the entrance exams (UTME) for prospective undergraduates.
Seeing young chaps running around to write the nationwide revered exam JAMB, brought back bittersweet memories for these three Nigerians. We had a chat with them and all we can say is, ‘Omo!’
These three people’s JAMB experience are tales that will crack you up–or not.
Mimi*, 28
I think I will always be fashionably late, maybe even to my own burial. The first and the last time I tried bending that rule a little, it blew up in my face.
About 10 years ago when I was to write my first JAMB, my parents nagged me so much about being punctual. By 4 AM on the day of the exam, my mom and I were already at the bus stop. The exam that was slated for 6 AM that morning and there was no bus or car in sight.
Luckily for us, a family friend who had gone on a business trip was just heading back and offered to drop us halfway.
When we got to the venue, we met over 500 people with no exam facilitators in sight. They eventually arrived three hours late, around 9:00am, when most of us were already dozing off .
I passed the exam but never again, I will always be fashionably late abeg.
Chuks*, 35
See, the JAMB era of no-calculator was hard. No expo then, at least it wasn’t rampant. I wrote this exam five times!
I wrote the first one while still in SS2 to try it out and be better prepared for when I was fully ready. I got 196 but my parents encouraged me that it was a good start.
I scored 250 in the second one but got no admission as I wanted to study medicine in OAU.
By the third time, my parents came to the realization that their son really was an olodo 😭. They enrolled me for remedial classes. Luckily, I got a high score that year but didn’t make the mistake of choosing OAU again. And I definitely didn’t pick medicine either. If using a calculator had been allowed back then, I would not have disappointed my parents three times.
Joke*, 26
So many things went wrong for the JAMB I wrote in 2013, and yeah, it wasn’t my last. I travelled across five states and still came back home with nonsense grades 😭.
I should have known from the way things started out. We switched buses three times before we got to our destination. As if it couldn’t get worse, the second bus driver forgot one of my bags at the park. Then, the girl in whose house I I was supposed to squat for a few days started displaying ment upon my arrival. She would hit her head at intervals like crackheads do in movies.
The day I arrived, she served me a meal of rice and beans. I don’t even understand how she could call that meal cooked. I have never had any meal that whack in my life. The beans looked like they were soaked in water to soften then scooped on the rice. She kept asking if the food was okay, and I had to keep lying that it was.
On the morning of my exam, this girl woke me up by 5am and said that she needed to talk about her ex. She was still doing the head hit thing. I packed my bags and left for home after the exam that same day. It was as though I couldn’t get out of her place fast enough.
I didn’t realize that I had picked up the head hitting mannerism. I remember my dad landed me a hot slap and started shouting about me picking up very silly habits.
As fate would have it, my JAMB results came out later that evening. Needless to say it rained canes all throughout that day 😭.
#PeopleTalk is a submissions segment for everyday people to talk straight about the twists and turns of everyday life. This edition narrates the JAMB experience of three Nigerians.
