2018 UTME to Commence from March 9

Only 283,319 candidates apply

Kuni Tyessi

The Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Ishaq Oloyede, has announced that the Board has fixed the 2018 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) from March 9 to 18, 2018.

Professor Oloyede disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at a ‘Strategic Planning on Supervision and Evaluation’ of the conduct of 2018 meeting even as he lamented the low spate of registration of candidates.

He said February 6 is the closing date for the sale of registration form, bemoaning that as at the time of this report yesterday, only 283, 319 registrations had been made across the country.

Oloyede said in view of criticisms that trailed the sale of entry for a month in the past years, the board decided to earmark two months so that every willing candidate could be able to purchase, fill and submit the forms.

“We open entry from December 6, 2017, to February 6, 2018, but one month later, only less than a quarter of the two million candidates expected for the examination this year, have registered,” he said.

JAMB boss said it had been envisaged that a heavy concentration in the purchase of the registration form would be in the last one week to closing date, stressing that in view of that, the mock examination would be held in the first week of February across the country.

He further lamented that in the last year examination regime, candidates spent about N100 million for correction of errors caused by Computer Based Test (CBT) centres, stating that the board had gone ahead to correct the situation in advantage to the candidates.

“This time around, candidates type their names by themselves and this would eliminates, wrong spelling of names and other data, and we are doing this so as to deprive those who are extorting from candidates,” Oloyede stated.

As stakeholders suggested, the need for first aid medical facilities in examination halls, he warned that wristwatches, pen and pencil, other than required HB pencils, were prohibited in examination halls, starting from the next examination

Stating that even examination officers were affected by this new development, the registrar said the board had gone the extra miles to uncover new ways of cheating in examinations and discovered that sophisticated wristwatches were parts of the gadgets..