JAMB Registers 1.1m Candidates for 2023 UTME

 Funmi Ogundare

Over 1.1million applicants have registered for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said.

Registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, stated this yesterday while monitoring the ongoing registration exercise in some computer based test centres (CBT) in Abuja.

Oloyede visited CBT centres at Total Child International School, Dutse, JAMB Abuja zonal office, Life Camp, Global Distance Learning Institute and Sascon International College, Abuja respectively.

He also said the Board would not extend the deadline for applicants to register for the examination, warning CBT centres against extortion of applicants.

It would be recalled that the sale of the 2023 UTME commenced on Saturday, 14th January, 2023, and is set to close on Tuesday, February 14, 2023

 “UTME is not a school based examination, it’s individual candidates and you can see what that school, Stella Maris is doing, collecting N30,000 from candidates in the name of JAMB and then end up mixing up the telephone number of the candidates.

“So once they keep the telephone number of candidates it is unlikely that the candidates, when we are contacting them if we want to make a change in their timetable, you send a text to them and it will not get to them. After they have graduated from the school and want to change  the course, they don’t have access to it.

“And that is a way of extorting the parents. We will take adequate steps to make sure that we stop that. One of the reasons is that we will tell every CBT centre to stop doing bulk purchase of pins and bulk registration. So, if the centre sells more than one pin to a source or collects money for more than one pin from a source then we will sanction such centre.”

He urged candidates to report cases of extortion, saying that there was a code for candidates to reach the board when they come across any case of extortion, while promising there will be a reward for such an act.