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The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has revealed that over 11,553 underage candidates have registered for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
Oloyede made the disclosure in Lagos on Friday while inspecting approved computer-based test centres where candidates are being registered.
According to Oloyede, a total of 782,027 candidates have been registered in the last 10 days.
“Now, we have registered 782,027, and 11,553 of them are underage. So, you can see that as we are registering, the system is reporting from all over the country. Out of the expected two million candidates, we’re not yet at the 14th day.
“Monday will mark our 14th day. So, in two weeks, we would have completed about half of our registration process, and by that time, we expect to have over one million candidates registered. So far, everything has been smooth,” he said.
Oloyede pointed out that on Friday alone, 443 underage candidates were registered, with 18,813 candidates successfully registered that morning.
“Today alone, we have 443 underage candidates, and out of the 18,813 registered this morning, 443 are underage. This year, we’ve introduced a system that allows us to identify and track underage candidates.
“This will help us understand their issues and even identify those who might be genuinely gifted but still underage,” he explained.
He also spoke about a growing trend of parents enrolling their children early, stating, “It has become a common thing now, where parents whether mothers or fathers are registering their underage children, sometimes due to pressure or other reasons.”
He noted that the registration process for this year’s examination has experienced both commendable progress and notable delays, according to an official statement issued earlier this week.
Oloyede shared insights into the ongoing technical challenges and improvements.
“You are here. You were here last year. See if you can find any power outages, network failures, and so forth. I just heard recently that due to the technical measures put in place this year, things are a bit slow,” he said.
Oloyede acknowledged the delays while hinting that the situation was being actively managed.
Despite some criticisms, Oloyede noted that Nigerians’ desire for efficiency can sometimes clash with the systems put in place to regulate the process.
He said, “No, it’s not a bit slow. You know Nigerians generally want to have things their own way. Look at these students. In other climes, they have to register on their own. Nobody should be doing registration for them.”
He went on to emphasise the effort being made to ensure the system is thorough, stating that while some students had the option of having assistance with registration, many were not taking the process seriously.
“But go and see the attitude. Even when we have engaged people to be doing the enrollment for them, something they are supposed to do on their own, they are even not attentive.”
To mitigate potential issues, Oloyede disclosed that new measures were being introduced to ensure candidates fully engaged with the registration process.
He added, “What we do is that we put some safety valves into it. For example, for a candidate who is registered, we expect him to read certain rules. Before he will say, I agree. In the past, once he said, I agree, it goes. But we have now put a time limit. A time-space that whether he likes it or not, he must read because the system will not go until that time elapses.”
Despite the challenges, he pointed out the significant progress in registrations.
Oloyede said, “This is the first time that we have been registering 80,000-plus. Yesterday, we registered close to 100,000 across the country. And we have budgeted for 60,000 per day. That’s what we use in our planning.”
“But from the third day, we started 80,000, 90,000 per day. So, which means we will finish long before the time.”
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