The Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) has authorised higher institutions to begin first and second choice admission exercise as from August 21, 2020.
While disclosing this on Sunday July 19, 2020, JAMB’s spokesman, Fabian Benjamin, explained the admission guidelines to journalists in Abuja.
Fabian warned no institution should advertise or sell application forms into specific programmes. He stressed that candidates are expected to apply for such through the JAMB’s office.
The newly released guidelines stated that application for admission into higher institutions would be solely handled by JAMB through its central admission processing system.
It also noted that violation of the stipulated guidelines by the board would attract appropriate sanctions.
“The first and 2nd choices admission exercises be conducted for all institutions from August 21, 2020, to a later date that would be determined by the Federal Ministry of Education and communicated to all the institutions.
“The uncertainties of the COVID-19 make it impossible to fix a terminal date,” the guideline reads.
“All institutions are to conduct their admission-exercises within the approved schedule for 1st and second choices respectively.
“At the expiration of the period, any institution that failed to have conducted its admission will no longer have the candidates on its platform in CAPS.
“Policy guidelines for 2020 admission exercises as approved by the policy meeting and the directives by the Honorable Minister of Education shall be formally communicated to the institutions on or before 15th July, 2020,” it adds.
The guideline also warned institutions against charging candidates above N2,000 as well as requesting additional data from them aside the ones provided by JAMB.
“No institution is allowed to recapture or demand any photograph or biometric data from any candidate rather, the picture and biometric of candidate supplied by JAMB should be used for the exercise to eliminate impersonation and substitution of real candidate,” it states.
The guideline also stipulates that candidates who wrote the 2020 UTME but later obtained higher qualifications either A-levels or its equivalent, could apply to convert the UTME to the DE for free.
“After successful completion and submission of the form, the candidate’s UTME registration number has letter “U” appended to it (the registration number now becomes 11 digits). For instance, the UTME registration number 25513377AD after converting to DE becomes 25513377ADU,” it reads.
“Record of candidates who have converted from UTME to DE can only be accessed on CAPS with the eleven (11) digits registration number,” it concludes.
