THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says no fewer than 80,000 candidates sat for the rescheduled Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) which was held across the country on Saturday, May 6.

JAMB’s Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Fabian Benjamin, said this while monitoring the exercise in Abuja.

According to Benjamin, about 80,000 candidates could not sit for the 2023 UTME within their scheduled time.

The ICIR reports that JAMB had in a statement on Monday, May 1, revealed that of the 1,586,765 candidates that enrolled for the UTME, 80,166 could not sit for the examination.

The exam body then rescheduled the tests for the candidates who reportedly experienced technical hitches on the first day of the tests and fixed new schedule dates, between April 26 and May 2.

Candidates affected include those who were verified at their centres but could not sit the examination, those who could not be biometrically verified, and those with mismatched data.

During the exercise on Saturday, Benjamin said the deployment of innovations in the conduct of the exam paid off as the exercise recorded the lowest reported cases of infractions.

He, however, hinted that the exam body would analyse the conduct of the exercise after its conclusion to make a decision on the result.

“In this year’s UTME, the issue of examination malpractices was reduced to almost zero level,” Benjamin added.

Also, during the monitoring exercise, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, who was in company of the JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, hailed the conduct of the rescheduled 2023 UTME.

He said, “I am very happy with what I have seen. The (temporary) holding room (for candidates), and the arrangement in the conduct of the examination is in order.”

However, he noted that JAMB should have had a class for the holding room. “I think that is the only improvement they will make here.”