About 445,081 candidates have registered for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) against the 1.8million applicants targeted by the board.
The Registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this while monitoring the registration exercise in Ilorin, Kwara State capital , North Central, Nigeria.
He said that JAMB’s target this year is 1.8 million adding that there will not be an extension and further revealed that JAMB is planning to build a multi-million naira zonal office for Kwara which has been captured in its budget.
The registrar said, “We do not expect any extension. As of Sunday, 445,081 people have registered out of the 1.8 million candidates that we are expecting.
“We have gone halfway but you know some of our people will come at the last hour. But there is no room for an extension because we have made provisions for the registration of 100,000 candidates per day and we are doing 60,000 daily now.
“So the candidates are the ones not turning up well enough. For those who want to write a mock, the space is almost filled and when that happens, we don’t want to turn the mock into another examination. When the numbers are up to a quarter of the candidates, we will stop it. Now, we have about 144,000 who have indicated interest to write the mock,” he added.
Oloyede said, “I have discovered that in one of the centres, instead of buying enough cameras to capture the students, the owner bought just one with the possibility of missing the pictures with the names of the candidates. That is very detrimental to the candidates and we have to suspend the centre from registration or conduct of the exams until the proper thing is done.
“Elsewhere, we had to make a few corrections but overall, it has been excellent because there has not been a single case of extortion. That is very gladdening to us as the purpose is to ensure that candidates have confidence in the system. We won’t allow any individual to pervert or divert the system.”
“We don’t need to appeal to any centre because they know we don’t have any sacred cows. Once they cross the line, they will be dealt with.
According to him, the board has been fair to the centers and that is why it has raised the fee of registration point from N700 to N1000 because of the price of diesel and it collected it on their behalf including the mock fee and pay the centres which amount to about N100m.
“We will continue to make the business profitable for the CBT centres but will not allow them to exploit the candidates,” Oloyede said.
JAMB boss noted that the inspection is to ensure that the rules and regulations for registration are complied with and convince everyone that there’s no need to cut corners.
Olusola Akintonde
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