The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has disclosed that it recorded appreciable drop in the number of exam malpractices in the conduct of the 2018 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Compared to 2017 with 2, 508 exam malpractice cases, the Board said it recorded 280 cases in 2018 UTME, indicating a percentage difference of -88.84 percent.

It also vowed to work assiduously with the all stakeholders to ensure continuous drop in the cases of exam malpractices, to, perhaps, boost the credibility of the exam system.

Its Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, had announced, shortly before the commencement of the 2018 UTME that the Board had reviewed previous exercises and had strongly blocked several identified and new possible avenues through which candidates could cheat.

However, a document obtained from JAMB indicated that 37, 516 candidates that successfully registered for the 2018 UTME were recorded absent for an unexplained reasons. This was against 30, 006 candidates that was recorded absent in 2017.

Similarly, the Board said it recorded 19.32 percent increase in the number of visually impaired candidates that registered for the 2018 UTME as against 2017 exercise.

It revealed that 315 visually impaired candidates participated in 2018 UTME as against 264 candidates that registered for the 2017 exercise.

It, however, thanked Federal College of Education (FCE) (Special), Oyo, University of Lagos (UniLag) and University of Jos (UniJos) for giving increased opportunity to visually impaired candidates in the 2017 admission year.

It disclosed that FCE (Special), Oyo, admitted 31 candidates in the 2017 admission year, while UniLag and UniJos admitted 30 and 20 candidates respectively, in the 2017 admission year.

Today.ng