About 1,475,477 candidates were registered by the Joint Admission, Matriculation and Examination Board (JAMB) for this year’s Computer-Based Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) holding March 10 and March 21.
The UTME will be written in 400 centres in Nigeria as well as seven foreign countries – Ghana, Cameroon, Republic of Benin, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Ethiopia.
JAMB Registrar Prof. Dibu Ojerinde told a news conference in Abuja yesterday that 208 prison inmates from Kaduna and Ikoyi prisons would write the examination.
He regretted that the number of candidates this year was a far cry from last year’s, which recorded 1,632,172 candidates. Attributing the decline to insecurity in some parts of the country, Prof. Ojerinde explained that there was a decrease of 156,695 compared to last year.
Imo State has the highest number of applicants, with 104,381. The Federal Capital Territory has the lowest figure of 4,085, while Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, with insecurity challenges, also ranked low with 15,692, 15,613 and 10,044 candidates.
