THE Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says a total of 390 blind candidates took part in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).

Fabian Benjamin, head of media and information, JAMB, disclosed this in the weekly bulletin of the Board issued on Monday.

According to the bulletin, Abuja centre had 57 blind candidates while Enugu centre had 59. Others were Kano centre that had 135 and Lagos with 139 candidates.

About 1.8 million candidates sat for the annual matriculation examination, which held between April 11 and 17 in 698 CBT centres across the country.

He said that security agencies deployed for the monitoring of the examination arrested no fewer than 100 candidates nationwide for various examination malpractices.

Benjamin said there were incidences of multiple registrations by candidates, adding that such practices were meant to facilitate impersonation and ‘ghost’ writing.

Among those arrested, he said, was a candidate who registered 64 times in a bid to ‘ghost write’ exam for 64 candidates since the exam runs for seven days with an average of three shifts per day per centre.

He  added that two candidates were also arrested at Rist Gobal Business Consult, a CBT centre at Ikorodu in Lagos for using their phones to screenshot exam questions which they intend to forward to their accomplices who work for certain tutorial centres.

“Recent findings by JAMB with respect to biometrics, facial recognition and names among others showed that multiple registration bloat the actual candidates’ registration in any given year by as much as 30 percent,” he said.

“Interestingly, from data available, it is evident that this unwholesome act is not restricted to any particular region of the country as it is prevalent in virtually all the states of the federation including the FCT, Abuja.”