The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, on Monday, restated its resolve not to extend the March 26, 2022 deadline for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, and Direct Entry, DE, registration.
JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede said the board will not extend the exercise because it is working on a tight schedule.
Oloyede, who spoke at the Global Distance Learning Institute, Abuja, while monitoring the exam registration exercise, said so far, between 1.5 million to 1.6 million candidates have been registered, but the closing days of the exercise were experiencing low turnout of candidates across the country.
He noted that only one candidate turned up for registration at the centre, instead of the usual 200 candidates per day, while registration across the country reduced to less than 20,000 two days ago as against the 70,000 to 80,000 daily registrations.
“Today is March 21, 2022; we still have five days to go and you can see how vacant the CBT centres are. So, we are telling you so that nobody on the 26th, will have the guts to tell us to extend. Now, we have registered about 1.5 to 1.6 million candidates; so, we are good to go.
“You can see how vacant the registration centres are. As big and as efficient as this centre is you have only one candidate and look at your time. So, it shows clearly that candidates are not coming out or we may have exhausted the number of candidates that are eligible for registration.
“We are working on a very tight schedule because of the other examination bodies who have their slot and we cannot encroach into the slot of NECO or WAEC or NABTEB. We have a very tight schedule. And that is why we continue to say yes, we have the capacity to register 100,000 in a day,” he said.
The JAMB boss urged prospective candidates to come out and register, adding that the board was taking the campaign to the public to call its attention to the fact that students are not coming out to register so there would be no appeal to the board to extend the date.
“And we have been registering seventy, eight but now we are registering; the day before yesterday we registered less than 20,000. So, we are saying that all the people who want to register should register now because there will be no extension,” he said.
Oloyede urged the media to take a tour of the CBT facilities in Abuja and witness the low turnout of candidates for registration in the closing days of the exercise.
On the complaints by CBT centres over the high cost of diesel and energy problems in the country, Oloyede said the board is trying to open a discussion with the NNPC and after due consultations, it would do something about it.
“Since we have pegged our charges at N700, they are complaining because they felt that it is practically impossible to run. We are not oblivious to the situation. We are in consultation with NNPC. We want to know what the situation is and by God’s grace, when we have the appropriate advice from the NNPC, we would address the issue.
“We are appealing to our partners the CBT centres to please be patient with us and give efficient services to our people. We are not wicked; we wouldn’t want people to run at loss, but this is where we are; we would see what we can do. We would take appropriate,” he said.
