Posted on Jan 21, 2020

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board has withdrawn licences from 11 centres for charging candidates exorbitant amount in the ongoing 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations registration.

Registrar of the board, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, made this known at an interactive session with stakeholders in Abuja on Tuesday.

The registrar listed some of the centres whose licences were withdrawn for selling forms at N5,000 as Federal Polytechnics, Mubi; Adamawa; and Adazi-Nnukwu ICT/CBT.

Others are New Kings and Queens Bayelsa, for selling at N5,500; Brightfield Secondary School Delta, for selling between N6,000 and N8,000; A-Pagen Consolidated Port Harcourt, for selling at N5,000 and Influencial School Port Harcourt, for selling at N6,000.

Oloyede said charging above the stipulated N4,700 for the 2020 UTME registration was illegitimate and would only destroy the nation; as it was an act of fraud and corruption.

“Many people make illegitimate money from the examination and we will be destroying the nation, if we don’t get things right.

“Prior to 2018, we sell form for N5,000; but the Federal Government considers so many things and felt the money was much and in 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari decided that the cost should be slashed; which brought the cost to N3,500.

“Also, prior to this time, there were unscrupulous people selling as high as N10,000. We now democratised the sale of the forms, to make it available so that it will not be possible for those selling to hoard the forms.

“We felt the banks are overcrowded so we decided to expand the sale outlet, to bring in mobile money operators to cover all the registered banks.

“The effects of the expansion is that some people are still penetrating the banks, thereby increasing the cost of the sale of form, ” he said.

NAN reports that the cost of the registration is N3,500, cost of materials is N500 and N700 for the CBT centres – totalling N4,700.

Also included are Emkenlyn Computers, and Nneameka Secondary School Anambra.

Oloyede said the proliferation of tutorial centres was a major concern as most of the centres engaged in fraud and corruption, during registrations and examinations.