The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) will be released on June 23.
The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, disclosed this on Wednesday during a news conference in Enugu.
Oloyede said he had no reason whatsoever to withhold the results of the UTME.
“The result ought to be out by now, but because I am not at the headquarters and I do not want to approve it while on the field.
“But as soon as I get to Abuja today, all the examinations up to the one being taken today will be approved and released because we have no reason to continue to hold on to it,” he said.
The registrar said his team was at the Southeast to assess what was going on with the conduct of the examinations and visit the new University in Ebonyi.
He noted that JAMB registered 1,415,501 candidates in the UTME 2021, and 1,122 095 had taken the examinations so far while 66,111 had yet to take.
According to him, the board has some 650 examination centres across the country, out of which 30 centres have been delisted for performing below standard.
“53 centres are currently under watch while 600 of them performed excellently.
“It is our wish and desire that the board will continue to ensure that such non-performing centres with ulterior motive will not be allowed to participate in the exercise,” he said.
Oloyede explained that using the National Identity Number (NIN) as directed by the federal government helped reduce examination malpractice during the examinations.
“We were talking about the bogus 2.2 million candidates, but it has become clearer that more than 500,000 of such number are fake and duplicated.
“And we were able to detect this through NIN, and now we have a realistic number of JAMB candidates,” the registrar said.
The examinations body boss frowned at the activities of some elements to sabotage the exercise, but they were all caught due to the system put in place.
He added that those students who visited a particular centre but could not write the examination would be rescheduled and new date fixed.
“Apart from registration fee, we did not collect any other money from candidates, but some pay as far as N25,000 to some elements to help them.
“Even some parents were paying N1,000 to somebody who did not finish primary six to help their children, but they will surely pay for it because we will delist them,” he said.
The registrar noted that the security situation in the Southeast was not as media and social media projected it.
“I came here myself with four directors, and nothing has happened to us.
“I want to commend the media for their criticism and support, which made 2021 UTME successful,” Oloyede said. (NAN)
