JAMB releases 2022 UTME results

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced the release of the results for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The examination body, in a statement shared on Saturday afternoon and signed by the head of its public affairs and protocol unit, Fabian Benjamin, however, noted the results are not yet uploaded on its website but can be obtained by the candidates by sending “UTMERESULT to 55019.”

JAMB said only the number used by the candidates to register for the examination will be eligible for sending such codes.

The statement reads in part; “To check the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) result, all a candidate needs to do is to simply send UTMERESULT to 55019 using the same phone number that he/she had used for registration and the result would be returned as a text message. This is the only process of checking the 2022 UTME results for now as the Board has not uploaded it on its website for obvious reasons.

“In addition, candidates are forewarned that they would, as usual, receive all kinds of messages from desperate fraudsters on how to check their results different from the aforementioned one. Hence, the Board urges all candidates to ignore all such messages on how to check their 2022 UTME results as they are all products of deceit aimed at misleading them.”

JAMB added that in line with its desire to adhere to the ease of doing business protocol of the government, it “emplaced this user-friendly and simplified process of checking UTME results.”

“Furthermore, this simplified process would also serve to preclude the unconscionable exploitation of candidates by shylock business centres and cybercafes which often take advantage of hapless candidates,” it added.

This year’s UTME was conducted across 750 computer-based centres nationwide and held between Friday, May 6, and Friday 13, 2022.

According to the examination body, more than 1.7 million candidates, including 383 blind candidates, took part in the examinations.

JAMB keeps mum over identified hitches

There were, however, reported cases of minor technical hitches recorded in some centres nationwide including failure of biometric capturing machines, computer malfunctions and incomplete questions.

But the examination body is yet to officially acknowledge these challenges, especially the incomplete questions, and has not responded to inquiries by parents and candidates on what to expect as remedies to the issues.

There were, however, instances where candidates were asked to return home by the examination officials with a pledge that they would be rescheduled for the examination.

PREMIUM TIMES is yet to ascertain if the affected candidates have been rescheduled and whether the examinations have been conducted or not.

Admission backlogs

The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is the entrance examination for candidates seeking admission into Nigeria’s tertiary institutions including universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and monotechnics.

However, due to challenges of industrial actions by workers of these institutions and the coronavirus-induced break, most public tertiary institutions have backlogs of candidates yet to be officially admitted with the results of the UTME conducted in 2021.

The new results released by the examination body will, therefore, constitute another backlog for many of these institutions especially based on the ongoing 89-day-old strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and other university-based trade unions.

The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has also declared a two-week warning strike beginning from Monday while their counterparts at the colleges of education, also during the week, gave a 21-day ultimatum to the government to either accede to their requests or face industrial action.