The Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination screening for the 2020 admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education will start from September 7, 2020, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has said.

JAMB also announced the withholding of the results of candidates who sat for this year’s UTME at Nigerian Correctional Service Centres over suspected infractions.

The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ish-aq Oloyede, stated these after a consultative virtual meeting with Vice Chancellors, Rectors and Provosts of tertiary education institutions.

The virtual meeting reportedly attracted 488 participants from across all states in the country.

According to Oloyede, the shift from the earlier announced August 2 date was to accommodate candidates who will take this year’s Senior School Certificate Examination conducted by the West African Examination Council.

He said, “Presently as you are aware, WAEC starts the SSCE on August 17, it will go on till September 7.

“Similarly, on September 21 or thereabout, the National Business and Technical Education Board will commence its own examination that will go on till on October 15, and immediately after that, the National Examination Council starts on November 5 and will hold till November 18.

“Rather than making candidates run; particularly, when they will have to take their exams in different towns and rush to  universities elsewhere for post-UTME; like somebody rushing from Sokoto to Ibadan for post-UTME, we believe we should avoid that.

“For the institutions which want to conduct post-UTME tests, it cannot be earlier than September 7 and it will be held twice — September 7 to October 4 —  and then it will be held for the second time on November 18 to mop up those who are taking their school certificate examination.”

While announcing the withholding of results of candidates who sat for 2020 UTME in prisons, he said, “There are candidates who took exams in the prison yard that we know are not prisoners; so we wrote to the correctional centres to explain how that happens, because we didn’t want non-prisoners to take advantage of the concessions we give to inmates.”