The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said on Sunday that it has sanctioned some personnel for harassing a female Hijab-wearing candidate.
The female applicant who took her Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination at the Bafuto Institute, Ile-Iwe Bus Stop, Ejigbo, Lagos, was reportedly ordered to remove her head cover during the accreditation procedure before entering the examination hall.
Addressing the problem in a statement written by the Board’s Head of Public Affairs, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the Board expressed great regret for the occurrence.
It stated that after conducting an inquiry, it discovered that the occurrence or others in the past were not related to any of its examination rules, but rather were the result of some of the Board’s accredited partners or officials’ misdirected priorities, who claimed ignorance of the Board’s accreditation guidelines.
The statement continued, “This matter was immediately resolved by a senior official of the Board at the facility, and the candidate in question was admitted after the usual checks with her hijab.
“However, since ignorance of the law is no excuse, the JAMB officials have been appropriately sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to others who may wish to toe the same line in the future.”
“It is worthy of note that the Board, as a national institution, has no policy barring candidates from sporting the religious paraphernalia peculiar to their religious persuasions as these are the facts of everyday life in Nigeria, which everyone should have been familiar with by now.”
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