A total number of 420,674 candidates have been registered for the 2025/2026 JAMB exams so far as at Monday afternoon.

Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this to journalists in Ilorin on Monday after his monitoring visits to some CBT centers in the state capital.

He said so far, no fewer than 32,435 candidates have registered for the exams as at Monday afternoon.

According to him, 124,632 candidates have entered for the mock JAMB exams, putting the number of trial testing candidates at 331 so far.

Professor Oloyede said the exam body has a target of two million candidates for the exams.

The JAMB registrar, who put the number of underaged registrants (candidates who would be less than 16 years by October) at 4,997 as at Monday afternoon, lambasted those he described as selfish parents that crave to make their children educational pursuit as their victory medal.

“You can see how we’re deceiving ourselves in this country. Before the maximum figure would be about 300. In a situation when we’ve just started in five days and we have a total number 4996 underaged registrants. By the end of today, they will be more than 5000.

“Many of these parents have misdirected their children. They want to use their children’s early education to decorate their CVs.”

On reasons for allowing underaged candidates in the exams, the jamb registrar said all underaged candidates are made to sign indemnity form or undertaking to meet up with academic ability or be sanctioned of such failure to meet up with claimed exceptional intelligence.

The jamb registrar also disclosed that six individuals engaged by jamb from various institutions in the country have been blacklisted for life from participating in jamb conducted examinations.

Professor Oloyede, said the people were caught in alleged exam malpractice, adding that we have their particulars, adding “one senior university official is being prosecuted for exam related crime, while others are under investigation.

The JAMB registrar said that, earlier in the registration exercise, 10 institutions were caught registering candidates in the night.

After his visits to CBT centres to monitor the registration for the 2025/2026 JAMB registration, he expressed satisfaction saying “the exercise was going excellently well in all centres.

“Going round, I’m very proud of those on the fields, CBT centres, my staff and everyone involved. I think it’s better by far. People know we’ll not take anything less than standard and they’ve done very well. We also thank security agencies. They’ve assisted us so well,” he added.