By Sodiq Adelakun

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has disclosed that it has so far registered over 1.16 million candidates for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede made this known while monitoring the registration exercise during  the weekend in Abuja.

Oloyede, during the tour, visited the Computer Based Test (CBT) centre located at Total Child International School, Dutse, JAMB Abuja zonal office, Life Camp, Global Distance Learning Institute and Sascon International College, Abuja respectively.

He also said that the Board would not extend the deadline for the 2023 Unified UTME registration, while warning centres against the extortion of candidates.

It would be recalled that the sale of the 2023 UTME commenced on Saturday,14th January 2023, and is set to close on Tuesday, 14th February 2023.

Oloyede, who was angry at some schools allegedly extorting students by charging huge sums of money for the UTME registration, warned that henceforth the CBT centres should not accept the bulk purchase of e-pins or registration of candidates.

Trouble started when the JAMB Registrar accosted some students from Stella Maris Secondary School, Life Camp Abuja who were brought in school busses to register at Sascon International College, Abuja, and asked them how much they paid for forms.

The students chorused N30,000 to the astonishment of Oloyede. Not satisfied with the response, he then asked the students individually on how much they paid all of them confirmed that they paid N30,000 to the school.

Unwittingly to them, they revealed to the Registrar that the school after collecting the money purchased a SIM card for them and secured the profile code for them against the practice of JAMB.

The Registrar after taking the teacher who brought the students for the registration at CBT Centre to task, while the school decided to extort the students using the name of JAMB, told the teacher who simply gave his name as Daniel to report at the JAMB Headquarters on Monday for further interrogation.

The JAMB Registrar at the commencement of registration had warned that any CBT centre found to extort candidates by selling the e-pin above the approved  N5,700 would be sanctioned.

In the same vein, the Registrar ordered the arrest of another teacher who allegedly collected N7,000 each from five candidates and brought them for registration at Sascon CBT Centre.

He directed the CBT centres to stop bulk registration of students unless there is permission from the examination body, stressing that JAMB does not deal with schools in the process of registration but with an individual student or candidate that wants to register for the examination.

The JAMB boss also warned the CBT centres against collecting the private data of candidates and keeping them, saying the practice should be stopped because it is against the data protection law.

Oloyede saw in some of the Centres that a book is opened for comprehensive information about all the candidates that register with them including their names, phone numbers, and registration code, which he argued were strictly personal and should be revealed to others.

He said, “Registration is going on well except for some of these schools.

“UTME is not a school-based examination, it’s individual candidates and you can see what that school, Stella Maris is doing, collecting N30,000 from candidates in the name of JAMB and then ending up missing the telephone number of the candidates

“So once they keep the telephone number of candidates, it is unlikely that the candidates when we are contacting them, if we want to make a change in their timetable, you send a text to them and it will not get to them, and after they have graduated from the school and want to do a change, of course, they don’t have access to it.

“And that is a way of extorting the parents and we will take adequate steps to make sure that we stop that. One of the reasons is that we will tell every CBT centre to stop doing bulk purchase of e-pin and bulk registration, so if a centre sells more than one e-pin to a source or collect money for more than one e-pin from a source then we will sanction such centre.”

Oloyede urged candidates to report cases of extortion, saying that there is a code for candidates to reach the board when they come across any case of extortion while promising there will be a reward for such an act.