More than 80 per cent of the 98,232 candidates eligible for nationwide mop-up Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) failed to turn-up for the examination on Saturday.
The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this during the monitoring exercise of the rescheduled examination in Abuja on Saturday, June 28, 2025.
Oloyede attributed the development to intensified security measures targeting impersonators and examination cheats.
He said the turnout was alarmingly low, with only about 12 per cent of registered candidates showing up across the country.
Oloyede noted that the mop-up examination is usually organised for a few thousand candidates with legitimate reasons, such as illness or verified technical issues, for missing the main UTME.
The JAMB boss said: “Every year, we do mop-up, and it is normally for about 4,000 to 5,000 students, who for illness or other genuine reasons could not take the exam.
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“Mop-up is also conducted for candidates who, after our review, we find out had technical problems in their centers.”
Oloyede explained that this year’s large mop-up pool was necessitated by allegations of widespread absence in the main examination.
He said JAMB opted to give everyone a second chance while also leveraging intelligence gathered from security agencies.
Speaking on Direct Entry (DE) admissions, Oloyede revealed that 14 candidates were apprehended for presenting forged certificates.
He lamented the role of educational institutions in the perpetration of the fraud, saying: “A new one that we discovered yesterday in the ongoing registration was that about 20 to 30 students, who did not go through NCE, were being awarded NCE certificates in order to be able to register for Direct Entry.
“One of the students who finished from secondary school in 2021, was purportedly said to have been admitted for NCE programme in 2020.”
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