The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said it had registered 1.5 million candidates, as it reiterated its stand to close its 2022 registration exercise on Saturday, March 26.
The board made this known in its Weekly Bulletin of the Office of the Registrar on Monday, in Abuja.
JAMB said that the sale of electronic Personal Identification Number for its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and Direct Entry which commenced on February 19 would end on Saturday and would not attract any extension.
“This emphasis is essential because of the persistent drop in the number of e-PINs being vended, as well as the low turnout of candidates at the various centres across the nation.
“It would be recalled that the board had stated that it would not extend the registration beyond the window allotted to it by relevant authorities to conduct the exercise.
“As discussed earlier, registration dates are not fixed arbitrarily but through a consensus of the Federal Ministry of Education and examination agencies, before the commencement of the exercise.
“Therefore, all candidates who desired to register for this year’s examination are to do so immediately, as they only have this week and no extension would be granted after close of registration, ” JAMB stated.
The board, however, said that it had so far registered exactly 1, 512, 739 candidates as of Saturday, March 19.
It added that it had also remitted N261, 992, 200 to accredited Computer Based Tests centres and the N700 accumulated service charge for the fourth week of the exercise.
The board had earlier introduced a cashless policy and directed all candidates to pay the N700 service charge to the e-PIN vendors, alongside the N3,500 application fees.
JAMB said that the cashless policy was introduced to curb the excess of some fraudulent CBT centres, which would want to take advantage of hapless candidates.
It promised, however, to remit to the centres, the accumulated N700 service charge on a weekly basis, proportional to the number of candidates they registered.
In a similar development, the board said that it had suspended two financial institutions who were also vendors in its ongoing exercise.
JAMB said that the vendors were also blacklisted for allowing their agents to vend UTME e-PINs to candidates, above the stipulated price of N4,700 cost of registration.
The board said that, besides blacklisting the vendors, it would retrieve the details of the agents for prosecution.
It would also report their illicit act to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, to ensure extorted candidates were fully refunded. – NAN.
