AHEAD of the April 11 date of 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), a total of 157,000 candidates on Monday sat for the mock UTME organised by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) across the country.

Registrar of JAMB, Ishaq Oloyede who monitored the mock examination in Abuja said the motive was to test run all the Computer Based Test (CBT) centres accredited for the examination.

He disclosed that an additional 14 CBT centres out of the total 712 centres earlier accredited to be used for the annual matriculation examination were Monday morning discredited for various infractions.

“Out of the 712 centres that we have, we have had to disaccredited 14 this morning for one infraction and the other, “he said.

“The infractions are technical and some deceit, whereby some of them will go and borrow some computers and thinking we will not know. Now we have about 698 centres left in the operation.”

The Board in January suspended nine CBT centres for extorting money from candidates for registration for the examination.

Oloyede also disclosed that two officials of JAMB escaped death in Lagos Monday morning after what he described as ‘a brutal attack’ while monitoring the mock UTME.

He said the two affected Board officials came under the deadly attack for insisting that the right must be done at a particular CBT centre around Lagos State Polytechnic.

“Two our staff were almost murdered in Lagos, there was an attempt on their lives at LASPOLY, somewhere before Lagos State Polytechnic,” the JAMB Registrar said.

“For whatever reasons, they were wetted with petrol to be set ablaze. We have sent a rescue team to take them to the hospital, but we are still looking into what happened in the place, but we have evacuated our staff from there.”

“We hope whoever had attempted that, we believe the law enforcement agencies will not allow for such assault on innocent government officials going about their normal business.”

Oloyede and Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu monitored the conduct of the examination at the Global Distance Learning Institute’s CBT centre, Abuja.

About 1.8 million candidates registered for the 2019 UTME, which will commence on April 11 in 698 CBT centres across the country.