The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has said that Direct Entry candidates are required to sit for a school-based aptitude test and not the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
The board also said that students who had already been matriculated into higher institutions of learning were not eligible to sit for the UTME.
The Head of Information, JAMB, Mr. Fabian Benjamin, said this on Monday in a telephone interview with our correspondent.
He said, “Direct Entry candidates will attempt an aptitude test which is school-based. They are not sitting for the UTME. The test is from the universities. The new book we introduced will be used by Direct Entry candidates for the aptitude tests that will be conducted by the universities. Students with matriculation numbers of universities are not eligible to sit for the UTME. If they are not satisfied with their chosen disciplines, they can ask for transfer.’’
The JAMB spokesperson also expressed confidence that despite the hitches in the registration process being witnessed across the country, all 1.5m candidates expected to register for the 2017 UTME would be registered by the April 19 deadline.
“We have noted this precedent and we have introduced Remita and Interswitch to ease registration. This is in addition to more than 17 banks that are registering candidates. We used to have three banks in the past.
“We registered 600,000 candidates in 10 days and if we go on at this pace, it means we would have registered 1.2million in 20 days. We want Nigerians to be patient and every eligible candidate will be registered by April 19, when the registration will close,’’ he said.
