Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has said the March 26 deadline for the registration of the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE) would not be extended.
Oloyede made the announcement during the monitoring of the registration at Global Distance Learning Computer-Based Centre yesterday in Abuja.
According to him, the deadline would not be extended because the board was working on a “tight schedule”.
Oloyede expressed displeasure at the turnout of candidates at the centre, saying only one candidate turned up for registration, instead of the usual 200 or more candidates per day.
He said: “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 March 26, will have the guts to tell us to extend. Now, we have registered about 1.5 million 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 that have their slots. We cannot encroach into the slots of the National Examination Council (NECO), the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), and the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB).
“We have a very tight schedule. That is why we continue to say yes, we have the capacity to register 100,000 in a day.”
Oloyede said the board was taking the campaign to the public to call attention to the fact that students were not registering.
He also said the cost of buying diesel to run the CBT centres was becoming unbearable.
JAMB Registrar noted that the board had opened discussion with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), saying after due consultation, the problems would be addressed.
Also, JAMB said it had suspended two financial institutions for vending the e-PINs above N4,700 in the ongoing registration for the UTME and DE. But the board did not name the financial institutions involved in the infraction.
Oloyede, at a meeting with financial institutions (vendors) engaged in the vending of the 2022 UTME/DE e-PINs, announced the immediate suspension and blacklisting of the two vendors for allowing their agents to vend the e-PINs above the stipulated price.
He said besides blacklisting the vendors, the board would also retrieve the details of the agents for prosecution.
JAMB stated these in its weekly bulletin released by its Head of Media, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, yesterday in Abuja.
The board said it would also report their illicit act to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, to ensure that extorted candidates get refunded.