Don’t pay more than N4,700 for UTME registration, JAMB Urges candidates

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) expressed displeasure over some secondary schools, especially the high profile among them, for charging students more than the official fee for the registration of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination(UTME) being conducted by the board.

The official charges, according to JAMB, is N4,700 in all, comprising N3,500 registration fee, N500 for customized book and N700 as CBT centre charges.

The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, expressed the displeasure, on Wednesday, in Lagos, while doing unscheduled monitoring of the ongoing registration of candidates at some CBT centres, including the ones at TKK building, Obanikoro, on Ikorodu Road and the WAEC International Office at Ogba.

He said some schools, especially in Lagos and Abuja, on the excuse of assisting their students, charge them as high as between N8, 000 and N15, 000 per student to register them for the mandatory exam for tertiary schools admission in the country.

This claim was confirmed to newsmen by some of the candidates who are students of some secondary schools (names withheld) and brought by their teacher to TKK CBT centre to register them.

The students, just like their peers from other schools in the same practice outside Lagos State are being brought to CBT centre in batches.

The students, who spoke on camera, said they paid N8,000 each to the school and that the amount covers the official N4,700 charges and the rest as unspecified charges.

Prof Oloyede said “JAMB would compile names of those schools and present them officially to both the Federal Government and the states’ ministries of education where those schools domiciled for appropriate sanction.

“The practice is frustrating the Federal Government’s gesture for reducing the exam fee to N3,500.”

Prof Oloyede, who was also furious at the manner said some parents indulge their children in documents falsification, especially birth certificates when registering them for the exam, warned parents in such act to desist from the practice and also stay off the CBT centres.

He said, “there were many underage students such as 13 or 14 years old who are registering for the exam and are not up to 16 years mandatory age minimum at the period of admission. I wondered why some parents would overprotect their children and also rush them in their academic journey.

“Now with the use of the National Identification Number(NIN) for registration for UTME, it would become almost impossible for impersonation of candidates in the exam.

This is because, according to him, NIN will bring out the details including the photograph of any registered candidate during the exam.

He said the admission processes right from the candidates’ registration for the exam to the provisional of admission to successful candidates are all transparent.

He said with the dedicated router of JAMB with all schools about 890 of them from colleges of education to universities and over 750 CBT centres, it would be difficult for any school to manipulate the admission process of their schools or candidates.

He said all schools under the JAMB admission process are being monitored by the designated board officials including himself anywhere they are across the globe.