The Joint Admissions Matriculation Board has directed all institutions to begin the conduct of the first and second choice admission with effect from August 21.
While directing institutions to desist from selling forms for admissions into some listed programmes, JAMB urged them to advise candidates to apply for the programmes through its office.
The spokesperson for JAMB, Dr Fabian Benjamin, who gave the directives in the 2020 admission guidelines released in Abuja on Sunday, warned that duplication of application forms was not allowed.
The guidelines also warned that all admission exercise must be conducted on the Central Admission Processing System.
Benjamin stressed that sanctions would be applied to any institution that violates any part of the guidelines.
The guideline reads in part, “All applications for admissions to First Degree, National Diploma, National Innovation Diploma and the Nigeria Certificate in Education into full-time, distance learning, part-time, outreach, sandwich, etc, must be processed only through JAMB.
“Institutions that desire to place advertisement can do so by advising candidates who applied for the current Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination to change to their institution as first choice rather than requesting the candidates to purchase another application form or apply. This is to prevent the issue of double registration which is a violation of the JAMB mandate.
“The admission-exercise for the 2020/2021 academic session would be conducted on CAPS. No institution is allowed to publish, announce, exhibit or paste any name(s) of admitted candidate without prior approval of the name on CAPS. Indeed, the exercise is to be fully conducted only on CAPS
“The first second choices admission exercises should 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.”
While warning institutions not to charge above N2,000 for any form of screening or make candidates incur other screening-related expenses directly or indirectly, JAMB warned against any request for photograph or biometric data from candidates by any institution.
On the upgrade from UTME to the Direct Entry in the 2020 admission session, JAMB stated that candidates who took 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.
Meanwhile, JAMB has appealed to Computer-Based Test centres to obey all official protocols on the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to its weekly bulletin, the Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, said this during a web-hosted meeting to deliberate on new operational processes under the extant COVID-19 dispensation.
He said, “Obey all rules to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. We don’t want your centres to be a ground or platform for the spread of the virus. We urge you not to expose your own life, the life of your workers, candidates and clients coming to your centres.
“You are enjoined to adhere strictly to all the National Centre for Disease Control and the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 Protocols when relating with candidates and the public.”
