1.5m For 2012 UTME Exams Nationwide

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says 1,503,931 candidates will write this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) on Saturday March 24.

Registrar JAMB, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, stated this while briefing newsmen on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to him, this is the highest number of registered candidates the board has recorded since inception.

Our correspondent  reports that 1,493,603 candidates registered for the 2011 UTME, while 1,375,642 registered for the examination in 2010.

The registrar said that this year’s figure witnessed a marginal increase of 10,338 candidates over the 2011 figure, as against an increase of 117,961 candidates recorded in 2011 over the 2010 figure.

He explained that the examination will hold simultaneously in 375 towns in the country and six foreign countries, namely: Ghana, Cameroun, Republic of Benin, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

“It is worthy to note that there is a remarkable increase in the number of registered candidates in all our foreign centres.

“No doubt this underscores the acceptability of our tertiary educational system around the world. Many Nigerians are wishing to come back home for tertiary education. ’’

He disclosed that the examination would be conducted in 3001 centres as against the 2,872 centres that were used for the examination in 2011, adding that the board created an additional 129 centres across the country for this year’s UTME.

Ojerinde said that JAMB decided to upgrade the Biometrics Finger-print System for this year’s examination,as a result of the malfunctioning of machine and late coming by some officials charged with the responsibility of managing the machine.

“In this year’s examination, the biometrics machine to be deployed is technically faster than the one in 2011. It takes only a few seconds to get the machine to initialise using candidate’s examination centre code”.

“Also, it is easy and user-friendly because all that is needed to operate is just to connect the system to its power pack, enter the centre code and the system is automatically ready for verification. ’’

The registrar assured that it would take the machine 30 to 40 minutes only to verify the 540 candidates registered in each centre.

He said that he was confident that the board would overcome the hitch recorded during last year’s examination.

Ojerinde reminded the candidates to be at the centres with their examination e-slips for proper identification.

He said candidates would not be allowed into the examination halls with writing materials, saying that the board would provide them with calculators, pencils, erasers and sharpeners.