The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board is rolling out major technology-driven upgrades for the 2027 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, featuring a new mobile pre-registration platform and an automated system designed to reject incorrect subject combinations.
The reforms were disclosed on Saturday in Abuja by the JAMB Registrar, Professor Segun Aina, during a five-kilometre fitness walk organised for the board’s staff to mark early preparations for the 2027 examination cycle.
For years, Nigerian candidates have faced severe admission setbacks due to selecting subject combinations incompatible with their chosen courses, a recurring issue that often disqualifies students despite high scores [[16]]. The new digital intervention seeks to eliminate this error entirely at the point of registration.
According to Professor Aina, the proposed pre-registration application will allow prospective candidates to complete key registration steps from home before visiting accredited centres for final biometric capture.
“Now we are rolling out what we are calling a pre-registration application,” Aina stated. “It’s a mobile application that allows you, from the comfort of your own home, to get your details from NIMC, register with your biodata, select your subjects, your courses and your institution.”
The Registrar explained that the system will retrieve personal information directly from the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) database. Additionally, it will provide advanced academic guidance, such as displaying the previous year’s entry marks for preferred courses, helping candidates make realistic choices based on their actual abilities and available admission requirements.
Beyond simplifying registration, the board is deploying a technical safeguard to make it impossible for candidates to submit applications with incompatible subject combinations.
“We are going to make that technically impossible, which means you cannot progress with your application if the subject combination is wrong,” Aina noted, adding that further innovations are in the pipeline.
To strengthen examination security, the board will also enforce stricter biometric verification at test centres. This measure serves as a counterbalance to recent concessions granted to candidates for correcting biodata errors, ensuring the integrity of the examination process remains intact.
“In exchange for that, we will be applying enhanced checks at the point of the examination to make sure that we protect the integrity of the system,” the JAMB boss explained.
In another significant development, candidates sitting for the 2027 UTME will be able to report potentially faulty examination questions in real time via a dedicated button on the computer-based test (CBT) platform. Aina cautioned that this feature is meant to gather evidence-based feedback on question quality, warning candidates against assuming that difficult questions are necessarily defective.
Furthermore, JAMB plans to introduce a post-examination rating system. This mechanism will empower candidates to assess the quality of services rendered by private CBT centre operators, fostering accountability and helping the board maintain high operational standards.
Professor Aina acknowledged the role of CBT operators since the adoption of computer-based testing over a decade ago, but emphasised that continued partnership will now be tied to strict monitoring and direct candidate feedback.
The board stated that these innovations form part of a broader strategy to reduce registration friction, curb examination malpractice, and sustain public confidence in Nigeria’s tertiary education admission system.
