JAMB Issues New Guidelines For Admission Process

By Akinwale Kasali

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB,  has provided new guidelines to ensure seamless conduct of future operational processes, including the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME for prospective admission seekers.

The Board made this known in its Weekly Bulletin of the Office of the Registrar in Abuja.

There are six new guidelines including introduction of double fingerprints, exemption candidates, and others.

The Board stated that as a requirement for printing registration slips, a candidate must use at least two fingers and any of the two fingers taken would be used for biometric verification prior to entering the examination hall on the day of the examination. The two verifiable fingers of all candidates must be consecutively indicated on the candidates’ registration and examination slips.

Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB Registrar, warned that some cybercafes and tutorial centres had been prohibited from participating in any of the board’s exercises.

Oloyede said that no CBT centre would be allowed to collaborate with the prohibited group, adding that any violation of the directive, whether in part or whole, would lead to the revocation of the licence of the erring CBT centre.

He stated that No new Computer-Based Test centre would be accredited without meeting the new requirements.

To this end, new CBT centres must use laptop computer systems as clients, zero thin-clients or Remote Desktop Protocol would no longer be accepted, and also, No CBT centre must install any clients with less than 2 gigabyte RAM.

It has however mandated that the Autobot system should be used for the accreditation of CBT centres; there should be three Autobot tests: Pre-accreditation during Mock – UTME and the dummy examination.

The registrar also said that biometrics of all accredited CBT centre registration officers would be captured ahead of the exercise.

This, he explained, was because the board as a proactive agency must move with the tide to stay ahead of the machinations of cheats and safeguard the integrity of the system.

At the registration point, candidates with bad fingerprints would be scheduled for the examination as ‘Exemption Candidates’.

Their registration slips would be colour-coded and visually different from those for other candidates.

Such candidates would sit their examination in Abuja on the last date of the national examination calendar and their results would not be released until after being subjected to proper scrutiny.

It added that to further consolidate its data collection efforts, the board would consider separating UTME registration from that of Direct Entry beginning from 2023. And to further condone illegal admissions and printing of indemnity forms, all candidates’ registrations, including UTME, DE and others, must be completed with fingerprint authentication.