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By Lawrence Agbo
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has assured candidates affected by technical glitches during the 2026 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) that fresh dates will be provided to enable them to sit for the test.
JAMB’s Public Communication Advisor, Fabian Benjamin, gave the assurance on Friday while addressing members of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education during their monitoring of the ongoing exercise in Abuja.
“We are assuring all Nigerians that every candidate who has registered for this exam will be given the opportunity to sit this exam,” he said.
“If your centre fails today, you will be rescheduled again to take the exam. For any reason, even when you are rescheduled, and you are unable to sit the examination, you will be rescheduled again.”
The board noted that although the examination commenced on Thursday across hundreds of computer-based test (CBT) centres nationwide, some candidates were unable to take their exams due to delays and technical issues experienced at certain locations.
“That is why when we finish the exam, we have what we call the mop-up… to ensure that candidates whose centres failed and they could not take the exam are given another date,” he added.
Benjamin acknowledged the disruptions but described them as expected given the scale of the exercise, which is projected to accommodate about 2.2 million candidates in 966 centres nationwide.
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He stressed that no candidate would be denied the opportunity to sit for the examination, explaining that those affected would be rescheduled.
He added that even candidates who miss their rescheduled dates for any reason would be given another opportunity.
According to him, JAMB has also made provision for a mop-up examination to capture all candidates who could not write the test due to technical failures or other challenges.
“Naturally, you should have one or two challenges here and there. It is not unusual… you cannot conduct an exam in over one thousand centres and expect that you won’t have any problem,” he said.
“But the most important thing is that if these problems occur, are you prepared to handle them? And that is what we have done. All those candidates will be rescheduled to another date and centre where they will sit the examination.”
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Mohammed Dandutse, acknowledged the challenges and assured that steps would be taken to improve the efficiency of CBT centres, stressing that no candidate should be left stranded without taking the exam.
“So definitely we are going to address it and we are going to make sure that all the CBT centres are well functional and efficient. Because there is no moral justification for somebody to come from far away and be left stranded without writing the exam,” Dandutse said.
