Exam body says 1.85m candidates applied for online test

The board's Registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, announced this in a statement emailed to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.

The statement said that this year's figure was an improvement on the 1.47 million candidates who applied for the same examination in 2015.

It added that the figure for the 2016 UTME showed an increase of 113, 673 applicants against last year's figure.

According to the statement, a total of 343 prison inmates nationwide will participate in this year's Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

It said that these inmates would also have access to computers at both the Kaduna and Ikoyi prisons.

"The 2016 UTME will commence on Saturday, Feb. 27 and will last for about 14 days.

"It is, however, expected that all candidates who were unable to conclude their registration process as at Feb. 5, will seize the opportunity of the 48 hours grace of the opening of the portal to do so before mid-night of Feb. 25," it said.

The board pointed out that this did not include fresh registration.

"The board wants to seize this opportunity to clearly state that the Federal Ministry of Education and JAMB will not be doing this again and prospective future candidates'registration will close as indicated in our advertisement.".

It noted that the board’s matriculations examination has grown to be a ``vitally indispensable gateway" to tertiary institutions in Nigeria with a great measure of performance and integrity emulated globally.

The statement explained that this was inspite of increasing number of candidates and other challenges which the board’s management had consistently addressed.

It said:"For purposes of clarity, let me remind Nigerians that, the first Joint Matriculation Examination (JME) was held in 74 towns in Nigeria and by a special request in Gambia, with a total number of 96,884 candidates tested.

"However, the challenges in the conduct of examination became enormous as the number of candidates increased.

"Question papers were printed flown into Nigeria and transported in trailers escorted by security agents to the Board’s office.

"The distribution of the materials to the various examination towns was also done largely by air, road and so on.

"Materials were stacked up in large cartons and distributed to states from where they were conveyed in vehicles to the custodians.

"This was the story of the board. Today, the Computer Based Test (CBT) has erased all this hurdles and ensures that the system is seamless.

"And we call on Nigerians to continue to support the board in this drive to return the glory of Nigerian education when it was placed far above foreign education."

According to the statement, in the board's effort to maximize the few spaces in the country's tertiary institutions informed the redistribution of candidates in the last admission exercise.

It noted that the policy was grossly misunderstood even though the candidates were those that were ``not admitable" based on the prevailing guidelines.

The statement however, said that the board had fine-toned the policy by introducing another choice after the preferred among the schools that are under-subscribed.