By Laju Iren

THE Minister of Education,  Mr. Adamu Adamu early last year lamented that many students who undergo the Computer Based, Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations are not computer literate. Another study showed that even students who are computer literate still have some anxiety when facing Computer Based Tests. However, the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board, JAMB who organizes the exams says that there is no going back on CBT. The only option left is for schools to expose their students to CBT early enough.

Co-Founder and Lead Developer at Pengage Technologies Limited, Mr. Simeon Omonofa says his company does just that.

Founded in 2015, Pengage is involved in full scale digitization of examinations in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in Nigeria. “Our Computer Based Test now makes it possible for both objectives and theory examinations to be conducted using computers, this saves the school error free recording, zero cost of printing, unprecedented speed of result generation and a secure way to examine each student performance per term,” says Omonofa whose StartUp also provides complete learning solutions and digital interactive learning to schools in Nigeria.

Simeon Omonofa

He told Hitech Start-Ups: “The various bodies responsible for conducting general examinations in Nigeria have often decried the poor performance of students who sit for these examinations that is why we created a product to help students use information technology as tool that can aid their academic performance. For schools, our CBT solution is an easier and standard way of accessing students’ performance with the use of computers. It saves cost of printing question papers, generates results more quickly and creates more room for other academic activities in the school.“

Challenges however, seem to be synonymous with Start Ups: “One major challenge we faced was the fact that most academic institutions we approached with our CBT solutions turned it down because they were at first skeptical and many of them lacked the infrastructures to make it work.

This was because they were not technology driven and still preferred the regular pen on paper examination. So initially the market opportunities were very slim. However, we were able to convince some of the schools by showing them how we can eliminate cost of printing bulky question papers and save about 2 weeks in their academic calendar because results from our CBT solutions are generated immediately after the examination.”