Authorities at the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) has disclosed that a total of 1,989,181 million candidates have successfully applied to sit for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, nationwide.
The examination which is expected to kick off from April 11 through 18th, 2019 would also in-cooperate candidates that are deaf, blind, including some prison inmates.
JAMB’s Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede gave the figures, in Abuja on Monday, while fielding questions at a stakeholders’ forum, with the theme: Strategic Planning and Preparations for Supervision and Evaluation of Administration of 2019 UTME.
A total of 708 Computer Based Test centres have been approved by the Board to host the examination, nationwide.
The Board insisted that only candidates verified through biometrics would be allowed to sit for the examination, just as it noted that those whose fingerprints may not have been captured properly but can authenticate their identity may have to travel down to JAMB headquarter in Abuja, where they would write the examination.
Oloyode said any candidate who fell under such category would be catered for appropriately, including their transportation and other logistics but they would be required to take the examination under the Registrar’s presence.
He said, “Any candidate that cannot be verified by BVM must not be allowed to take the examination under any guise. BVM is the only form of attendance register.
“No Biometric Verification, No examination. Discretion is not allowed on this matter.
“All candidates whose fingerprints could not be captured during registration from centres across the country will be brought to JAMB Headquarters to take the examination and JAMB will pay for their transportation for the two trips.
On new innovations for the UTME, Oloyode said, “a separate indicator had also been created for the deaf to differentiate them for special attention at the examination centre. Efforts are on to provide the option of special centres or mainstreaming for the blind.
“We now have live report on centres that registered any candidate, the time the candidate was registered, who registered the candidate, computer system used, the location of registration.
“All these are done through our enhanced monitoring system. I want to warn candidates expected to sit for this examination to ensure their biometrics were taken and verified for the examination.”
