2022 UTME: JAMB registers over 500,000 candidates, targets 1.5m

The Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Ishaq Oloyede, says so far, over 500,000 candidates have registered for the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Oloyede, who disclosed this while monitoring the registration exercise in Bwari, Abuja, on Thursday, said the board’s target is to register a total of 1.5 million candidates before the March 26, 2022 deadline.

He said the board also plans to register at least 50,000 candidates per day and succeeded in registering about 70,000 two days ago, adding that the exercise has been mostly successful and 99 per cent of problems encountered by candidates were self-inflicted because they played into the hands of fraudsters.

While appealing to non-candidates to keep off registration centres, he urged parents to allow their children to read the registration instructions and follow, warning candidates not to divulge their codes to third parties as fraudsters could use them to manipulate their profiles to their own detriment.

While noting that there was a little glitch on the system yesterday, he said from interaction with candidates who had problems, adding that “you saw that 99 per cent of the problems are self-inflicted and it is because they play into the hands of fraudsters. You can see the gentleman who said he was just a do-gooder and was doing the wrong thing on their profile. He will cease the profile and they will go back to check, blackmailed them.”

Speaking on the quality of CBT test administered by JAMB, he said, “which of the biometric centres are they using that is as good as this one you have seen here? And yet we do it at N3, 500 yet people are still not complying with simple instruction. You can see that everything is going on well.

“Even outside Nigeria, West African College of Physicians and West African College of Surgeons, people from outside the country are coming here to patronise us because we are doing the right thing for them. So, if the quality of work is not good, they wouldn’t be coming from all over,” he added.

On those, who’s SIMs are missing, he said JAMB is doing something about it but cautiously, in order not to open up candidates to manipulation by fraudsters.

“We are working with the telcos in such a way that when that happens, we are putting a system in place, telephone update, where you would use your thumbprint to show that it was the same thumbprint then we would allow the system to change to another SIM for you.

“But if at the point of testing your thumbs, the finger prints are not coming up, we would leave you to go back and get your welcome back.

Speaking on the new approach of candidates filling and submitting hardcopy forms before commencing registration, he said the new method was introduced because candidates waste a lot of money trying to change correct names and “when you ask them, they say though I approved of it but I was not the one who typed it.”

(Daily Trust)