A total of 1,475,477 candidates have been confirmed by the Joint Admission, Matriculation and Examination Board (JAMB) to have registered for this year’s computer based Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The exam is scheduled to hold between Tuesday March 10 and Saturday March 21 across 400 centers in the country and seven foreign countries namely; Ghana, Cameroon, Republic of Benin, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Ethiopia.
JAMB Registrar, Professor Dibu Ojerinde who disclosed this in Abuja yesterday at press conference to announce the Board’s preparation for the examination also revealed that 208 prison inmates from Kaduna and Ikoyi prisons are also going to write the examination.
He, however lamented that the total number if canditates who registered for the examination had dropped from the last year examination in which 1,632,172 candidates sat for the Paper Pencil Test, the Dual Based Test and Computer Based Test.
While attributing the decline in the number of applications to insecurity in some parts of the country, Professor Ojerinde explained that there was a decrease of 156,695 applicants compared to last year adding that the registration process for thee computer based examination has also eliminated the incidence of dual or multiple registration by candidates.
Ojerinde who debunked a report that the Board had postponed the examination explained that the transformation to a full blown Computer Based Test mode became imperative in order to resolve the challenges faced by the Board in the conduct of its examination.
He stressed that the Board would leave no stone unturned in ensuring that the nation’s education sector is placed on the same pedestal with other developed nations.
His words: “We didn’t postpone the examination as reported by a national daily. Its not fair to have reported that the examination started on Wednesday. We did not tell them come for examination yesterday. We believe that we have enemies who don’t want this to work. We shall do it.
“Next week is when examination starts and not yesterday. The effect of insecurity can be seen in the rate of registration especially in the North. We want to move this country forward, we want to curb examination malpractices and we want to do it the way it is done world over. The president has endorsed our effort. The beneficiaries of pencil based exam did not want the computer based test.” Imo state has the highest number of applicants with 104,381 while FCT has the lowest with just 4,085. Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states with insecurity challenges also ranked among the lowest with 15,692, 15,613 and 10,044 candidates respectively.
By Kuni Tyessi
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