The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has registered a total number of 420,674 candidates for the 2025/2026 JAMB exams so far as at Monday afternoon.
Speaking with journalists on Monday in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, after his monitoring visits to some CBT Centres in the State capital, the JAMB Registrar, Emeritus Professor Is-haq Oloyede, said that so far no fewer than
32,435 candidates have registered for the exams as at Monday afternoon.
He also said that 124,632 candidates have entered for the mock JAMB exams, putting the number of trial testing candidates at 331 so far.
Professor Oloyede said that the examination body has a target of two million candidates for the exams.
The JAMB Registrar, who put the number of underaged registrants
(candidates who would be less than 16 years by October) at 4,997 as at Monday afternoon, lambasted those he described as selfish parents craving to make their children’s educational pursuit as their victory medal.
He said: “You can see how we’re deceiving ourselves in this country. Before, the maximum figure of underaged registrants would not be more than 300. You can imagine what the figure would be at the end of the exercise in March, when we’ve just started and in five days we have a total number of 4,997 underaged registrants. By the end of today, they will be more than 5,000.
“Many of these parents have misdirected their children. They want to use their children’s early education to decorate their CVs.”
Answering questions on reasons for allowing underaged candidates in the exams, the JAMB Registrar said that all underaged candidates were made to sign indemnity form or undertaking to meet up with their professed academic ability or be sanctioned if they fail to meet up with such claims of being exceptional intelligent.
The JAMB Registrar, however, disclosed that six individuals engaged by JAMB from various institutions in the country have been blacklisted for life from participating in JAMB conducted examinations.
He said: “The individuals were caught in alleged exam malpractice, we have their particulars,” adding that one senior university official is being prosecuted for exam related crime, while the others are under investigation.
The JAMB Registrar said that, earlier in the registration exercise, 10 institutions were caught registering candidates in the night.
After his visits to CBT Centres in Ilorin to monitor ongoing registration for the 2025/2026 JAMB exams, the JAMB Registrar expressed satisfaction with the exercise so far, saying “the exercise was going excellently well in all Centres”.
He added: “Going round, I’m very proud of those on the fields, CBT centres, my staff and everyone involved. I think it’s better by far. People know we’ll not take anything less than standard and they’ve done very well. We also thank security agencies. They’ve assisted us so well.”