By VERONICA DARIYA

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it has so far registered more than one million candidates as at Saturday, March 12, in its ongoing 2022 exercise.

The board disclosed this in its Weekly Bulletin of the Office of the Registrar on Monday in Abuja.

JAMB stated that the registration for its 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE), which began on Feb.19, would close on March 26.

The board said that, 1,121, 123 candidates have so far registered for the exercise.

It added that more than N600 million cumulative amount derived from the regulated N700 service charges of the exercise, had so far been remitted to the accredited Computer Based Tests (CBT) centres.

“JAMB had so far remitted over N600 million service charges to respective centres, in line with the cashless policy of the board, which represents the total number of candidates, multiplied by N700.

“This payments, however, excludes JAMB-owned CBT centres.

“N104,899,300 was paid in the first week of registration; N251,730,500 in the second week of registration and N332,150,700 was paid for last week’s registration.

“Cumulatively, more than N600 million had been paid to the CBT centres as centre charges.”

The policy, JAMB said, had reduced the sharp practices associated with warehousing candidates by tying them to non performing centres.

It has also helped the proprietors of CBT centres to have a global picture of the total amount being generated by their respective centres.

The board said that the cashless policy was introduced to curb the excesses of some fraudulent CBT centres, who would want to take advantage of hapless candidates.

JAMB said: “the board banned the use of cash and directed all candidates to pay the service charges to the e-PIN vendors along with the N3,500 application fees.

“The board, in turn, remitted to the centres on a weekly basis proportional to the number of candidates they register.”

In a similar development, the board also said that it had apprehended operators of CBT centres involved in illicit registration, following a sting operation in four states of the federation.

JAMB warned that it would not condone any infringement of its registration flow by the technical officials of any of its accredited centres.

“This warning became necessary after the report of a nationwide sting operation indicated that four registered centres in Kwara, Kogi, Katsina and Enugu had compromised the registration process.

“They committed the act for some unethical financial benefits through the deployment of unauthorised satellite registration points.

“Accordingly, some staff of three of the four centres, who were apprehended while perpetrating the illegal act, had been handed over to security agents for prosecution, while the accreditation of the centres had been suspended,” JAMB said. (NAN)

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