From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), said that beginning from 2022, it will collect fees for the Computer Based Test (CBT) centres involved in the conduct of the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and remit same to them.
This, it said, was necessitated by the need to curb unethical and unacceptable activities that are being perpetrated by some of the CBT operators who often take advantage of the ignorance of the candidates to extort and cheat the candidates.
JAMB, in its weekly news bulletin, disclosed that N700 CBT fee will be added to the cost of the 2022 UTME, and remit to the CBT operators weekly, monthly or as agreed with the operators.
JAMB explained that the CBT centre operators were, hitherto, given the opportunity to collect the N700 fee from the candidates, but they later observed that many of the operators used the opportunity to extort candidates and also engage in other corrupt activities during the UTME exercise.
Consequently, JAMB said it has resolved to henceforth, make the UTME registration process cashless in order to put a stop to such act of extortion.
“This intervention will block all loopholes through which hapless candidates are extorted by unconscionable service providers. This process will not, in any way, increase the cost of UTME registration which remains as it was in the previous years. As such, it is only the process of payment that has changed not the cost.”
JAMB recalled that, in the previous years, candidates pay N700 at the CBT centres but with the new policy, candidates would walk into any registration centre without paying anything as the fee hitherto payable to the CBT centres has been paid along with the cost of obtaining E-Pin.