1.5m candidates to write UTME, Saturday

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Tuesday, said that 1.5million candidates will sit for the Saturday,  March 24th,  2012, Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME in Nigeria and six other countries.

Prof  Dibu Ojerinde, JAMB Registrar at a press briefing held in Abuja, Tuesday revealed that a total of 1, 503,931 candidates are expected to sit for the 2012 UTME in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin, London, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.


Ojerinde added that the figure is the highest since the UTME started three years ago with a marginal increase of 10,338 candidates over the 1, 493,603 that sat for the exam last year.

The Saturday exams, Ojerinde stated would hold simultaneously in 375 towns spread across 3,001 centres  in the country, adding that the board had to create 129 additional centres this year against the 2,872 centres used last year.
 
Only 500,000 for admission  this year
According to Ojerinde,  the admission capacity across all the tertiary institutions in the country is about 500,000 .

This he said is a leap in the admission capacity compared to the 467,000 capacity of last year.