The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board(JAMB), on Tuesday, in Lagos, suspended two registration agents for allegedly collecting N6,500 instead of the approved N5,700 from candidates registering for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination(UTME).
The registrar of JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, who announced the immediate suspension during his on- the-spot assessment of the ongoing UTME registration in Lagos named the two suspended agents as Parkway Project and Digital Partners with branches nationwide.
Part of the CBT centres visited by the registrar and his team include JKK at Palmgroove and WAEC International office in Ikeja.
Oloyede said no any JAMB registration agent anywhere in the country is allowed under whatever guise to charge any UTME candidate above the stipulated N5, 700 per candidate except those who want to sit for a mock examination which attracts an additional N1,000.
He said all the JAMB partners in the UTME examination including the Computer- Based Test Centres where the candidates are expected to do their registration and sit for the examination are all aware of the rules and anyone among them who does contrary would be sanctioned immediately.
He said JAMB pays five per cent of all the money each of the agents collects from candidates to generate e-pins which they would use to proceed with their registration at the accredited CBT centres and therefore has no excuse to extort any candidate.
He said JAMB under his watch would not in any way condone illegal activities as regards its business of examination in the country but rather sanitise the system
While disclosing that a total of 533, 084 candidates had so far registered as of 2:00 pm on Tuesday across the country, he said the organisation expects about 1.8 million registered candidates in all for this year’s exam.
He said though the registration process across the country is slow as the daily target is 100,000 candidates, the organisation would not extend the registration deadline which is February 12.
He, however, asked prospective candidates and their parents not to patronise any registration agents that would extort them, insisting that N5,700 is the registration fee per candidate except for those who want to sit for the mock exam.