The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) has said no fewer than 22 candidates with biometric registration challenges would sit for the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) at the headquarters of the board in Abuja.
The board also said it will be responsible for the cost of transportation of the candidates to and from Abuja.
Speaking with online medium, Premium Times in a phone interview Sunday afternoon, the spokesperson of the board, Fabian Benjamin, said out of the 52 names that were sent to the board headquarters from the states, only 22 showed up for registration despite the fact that the board would be responsible for transportation.
This newspaper earlier reported the board saying any candidate with biometric issues must report at its office in Abuja to resolve the issues and write the examination.
According to the board, such a candidate will write the examination in any of the board’s accredited centres in Abuja while noting that it decided to introduce the measures after it discovered that many candidates use the biometric issue as an excuse to cheat.
Also in its weekly bulletin, the board said it would not reschedule examination for any candidate on account of a biometric challenge.
“Any candidate whose fingers could not be captured during registration at the CBT centre, must visit Abuja for his/her registration,” the bulletin said.
The JAMB bulletin also revealed that the 22 candidates that presented itself for registration were registered successfully.
The board said the measure has helped reduced the number of candidates with biometric challenges.
“This is against the 24,490 number of candidates whose examination were rescheduled on account of biometric verification challenges in the 2018 UTME,” the board said.
This year, sale or registration for all candidates (UTME /DE) including for those outside Nigeria, started from January 10 and ended February 21.
Also, the 2019 computer-based test examination will begin on Saturday, March 16 and end on March 23.
But there are indications that the examination may not hold on the said date due to the postponement of 2019 general election. The examination is expected to begin on March 16 and end on Saturday 23 nationwide.
The rescheduling of the Presidential and National Assembly elections affected the date of the mock examination which had been fixed for February 23. The board is yet to fix a new date.
Similarly, the examination body also revealed that it made N840 million between February 15 and 21, 2019 as revenue.
The sum is part of the examination body’s revenue generated through the ongoing registration for the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and other sources including sale and use of its electronic facilities.
