Over 1.47million candidates have been confirmed by the Joint Admission, Matriculation and Examination Board to have registered for the 2015 computer-based Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination

The JAMB Registrar, Dibu Ojerinde, disclosed
this on Thursday at a press conference.
He added that 208 prison inmates from
Kaduna and Ikoyi prisons will also write the
examination.
Mr. Ojerinde said the total number of
candidates who registered for this year’s
examination was a far cry from 2014’s. He
said over 1.6 million candidates sat for the
paper-pencil test, the dual based test and the
computer based test.
He said there was a decrease of about
156,695 applicants compared to 2014.
Mr. Ojerinde stated that Imo State had the
highest number of applicants with 104,381 and
the FCT the lowest with just 4,085.
He added that Borno, Adamawa and Yobe
States with insecurity challenges ranked
among the lowest with 15,692; 15,613 and
10,044 candidates respectively.
He said the effect of insecurity could be seen
in the rate of registration especially in the
North.
Mr. Ojerinde explained that the transformation
to a full-blown computer-based test mode
became imperative in order to resolve the
challenges faced by the board in the conduct
of its examination.
He disclosed that the registration process for
the computer-based examination had
eliminated the incidence of dual or multiple
registrations by candidates.
Mr. Ojerinde debunked a report that the board
had postponed the examination.
“It’s not fair to have reported that the
examination started on Wednesday,” Mr.
Ojerinde said. “We did not tell them to come
for examination yesterday. We believe that we
have enemies who don’t want this to work.
We shall do it. Next week is when examination
starts and not yesterday.”
He added that the board would leave no stone
unturned in ensuring Nigeria’s education
sector is on the same pedestal with other
developed nations.
“We want to move this country forward,” he
said. “We want to curb examination
malpractices and we want to do it the way it is
done world over.”
He noted that President Goodluck Jonathan
endorsed all moves by the Board to improve
its processes.
This year’s UTME is scheduled to hold
between Tuesday, March 10 and Saturday,
March 21 across 400 centres in Nigeria and
seven foreign countries namely: Ghana,
Cameroon, Republic of Benin, Saudi Arabia,
South Africa and Ethiopia.

-Silverbird