As count down to the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME begins, the registrar of JAMB, Prof Dibu Ojerinde, has announced that a total of 1,503,931 candidates registered for the 2012 examination, thereby making it the highest number of registered candidates so far since the existence of JAMB.
Prof Ojerinde, who spoke while briefing the press on the conduct of the 2012 UTME, revealed that contrary to speculations from certain quarters that the examination will not hold in some crises prone States, said that the body “will go to all the States including Borno and what you heard is unfortunate and was only a misunderstanding. What we said was that only primary schools were attacked in the State and if secondary schools are also attacked, then the venues in the State must be changed.”
He said that a total of 3001 centres will be used for the conduct of the examination as against the 2,872 centres in 2011.
“About 129 additional centres were created across the country and the implication of this development is that the board had registered more examination centres thus providing more access to deserving Nigerian children to tertiary education,” he said.
The registrar disclosed that biometric machines which are technically faster than the ones used last year are on ground to curb the spate of examination malpractice as anyone found with prohibited gadgets would be deemed to have been engaged in examination malpractice and the full weight of the provisions of examination malpractice law would be applied.