As of Monday afternoon, the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) had registered 420,674 candidates for the 2025/2026 JAMB examinations.
The JAMB registrar, Emeritus Professor Is-haq Oloyede, disclosed this yesterday after visiting some Computer-Based Test Centres (CBT) in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Oloyede disclosed that 124,632 candidates had entered the mock JAMB examinations, putting the number of trial testing candidates at 331.
He said his Board has a target of two million candidates for the examination.
The JAMB registrar, who put the number of underaged registrants (candidates who would be less than 16 years old by October) at 4,997 as of Monday afternoon, lambasted those he described as selfish parents who crave to make their children’s educational pursuits their victory medals.
“You can see how we’re deceiving ourselves in this country. Before, the maximum figure would have been about 300. We’re in a situation where we’ve just started in five days and have 4,997 underaged registrants. By the end of today, they will be more than 5000,” he said.
On the reasons for allowing underaged candidates in the examination, Oloyede said that all underaged candidates are made to sign an indemnity form or undertaking to meet up with academic ability or be sanctioned if such fails to meet up with claimed exceptional intelligence.
He, however, said that six individuals engaged by jamb from various institutions in the country had been blacklisted for life from participating in jamb-conducted examinations.
He said the people were caught in alleged exam malpractice and added that we have their particulars. He also said that one senior university official is being prosecuted for exam-related crime, and others are being investigated.
