The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has commenced the accreditation of Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres for the 2026 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

The board said no fewer than 848 CBT centres across the country are to be inspected in the exercise, which began on Monday, December 15, 2025.

Speaking at a meeting with key stakeholders, JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, charged members of the accreditation teams to be focused, diligent and thorough in the discharge of their duties.

The meeting was attended by Chief External Examiners (CEEs), Chief Technical Advisors (CTAs), zonal directors, state coordinators, officials of the Computer Professionals Association of Nigeria (CPAN), Zonal IT Officers (ZITOs), State IT Officers (SITOs), Project IT Officers (PITOs), among others.

Oloyede described the exercise as a call to national duty and warned against accrediting centres that fail to meet the board’s required standards.

He also urged the teams to be security conscious, avoid unnecessary risks and limit movements that could expose them to danger, assuring them that adequate security arrangements had been put in place to ensure a smooth and hitch-free exercise.

JAMB’s IT Consultant, Damilola Bamiro, explained that only centres that successfully conducted the mandatory automated test to assess system readiness were eligible for physical inspection.

He outlined key areas to be assessed, including CCTV coverage, which must be fully wired and powered, with HIKVision cameras of at least 16 channels. He added that all switches must be connected to an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

Other requirements, according to him, include verifiable holding rooms located close to examination halls, a minimum of 250 functional laptops for new centres, spacious registration areas with CCTV coverage, accessible network cables for biometric verification and the use of star network topology with all switches connected to a master switch for ease of troubleshooting.

Also speaking, Auwal Ahmed Bello, representing the Director of IT Services, took participants through the operations of the Centre Management System (CMS) and reporting procedures.

In their remarks, the Chief External Examiners, Vincent Tenebe, and the Chief Technical Advisors, Bashir Galandanci, reaffirmed their commitment to the successful conduct of the accreditation exercise.