1.5m candidates starts UTME Exams today in 708 centers

Over 1.5 million candidates will from Tuesday write the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 708 centers nationwide.

The UTME, which is conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), will also be written in three foreign countries.

At the end of the 2023 UTME registration exercise, over 1.595,779 candidates applied for admission into the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education,

According to JAMB, the UTME will start on Tuesday, April 25th and end on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. It was gathered that of the 708 CBT centers Lagos has the highest number.

Ahead of the 2023 UTME, the management of JAMB blacklisted 18 Computer Based Test (CBT) and may not participate in the UTME.

The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, assured the nation that the Board would conduct a hitch-free 2023 UTME

Investigations revealed that some candidates are still printing exam notification slips.

Registration statistics from JAMB showed that Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo, Ogun and Osun recorded a total of 506,127 candidates of the 1.595,779 registered applicants.

A breakdown showed that Lagos topped the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) with 270,573 registered candidates. Other South West states are Oyo, 94, 970, Osun, 41, 699, Ekiti, 21, 421, Ogun, 81, 048, and Ondo, 39, 547.

In  the top-10 states with the highest registration, three South West states of Lagos, Oyo and Ogun occupied the first, second and third positions; Rivers, 80,119, Kaduna, 79,478, FCT-Abuja, 76,132, Delta, 61,718, Kano, 52,790, Nasarawa, 51,289, and Kwara, 49,365.

The 10 states with the lowest registration are Zamfara with 4,988, Yobe, 10,522, Ebonyi 11,172, Sokoto, 13,042, Kebbi, 13,482, Jigawa, 13,983, Adamawa, 15,504, Bayelsa, 16,494, Borno with 16,793 and Taraba, 16,686.

Also, the Board disclosed the top-10 best performing centres with the highest registration. A centre in Rivers topped with 13,228 candidates, Ogun centre, 12,307 and Kaduna 10,894.

Others are Lagos 10,820 candidates, Edo recorded 10,777, another centre in Lagos (Agodo-Egbe) registered 10,713, a centre in Sangotedo had 10,631, a centre in Auchi 9,337, centre at Onike, 9,248 and a centre at Ota, 9,137.

The management of JAMB has delisted 18 CBT centers after the conduct of 2023 Mock-UTME exercise due to technical deficiency.

A breakdown revealed that Benue recorded three centers; Benue, Akwa-Ibom, Abuja, Kogi and Plateau states had two centers each while Anambra, Delta, Enugu, Imo, Kano, Lagos and Nasarawa had one delisted CBT centers.