The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has warned candidates that admission offers made outside its Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) may not be recognised. The board said accepting such offers could jeopardise a student’s academic journey and create problems with admission records. The caution, posted on X on Monday, comes weeks before the deadline for public universities to close their 2026 admission exercise.
“An admission offered by an institution outside the approved JAMB admission process may not be recognised as valid,” the board said. It added that accepting such an offer “could put your academic journey at risk and create complications with your admission records and related processes.” The warning was tied to an episode of its JAMB Explained series on illegal admissions, which closed with the line: “Verify before you accept.”
CAPS was built to automate admissions into tertiary institutions. Through it, candidates check their status and accept or reject provisional offers, while institutions process admissions within approved quotas. JAMB’s 2026 guidelines are blunt on the point: “Any offer of admission from any tertiary institution without JAMB Admission Letter is illegal and is not recognized by the Board.” Candidates who accept such offers, the guidelines add, do so at their own risk.
The timing matters. At the 2026 Policy Meeting on Admissions held in Abuja on May 11, stakeholders agreed that public universities should conclude admissions by October 31, 2026, and private universities by November 30. The same meeting retained 150 as the minimum UTME score for universities and colleges of nursing, and 100 for polytechnics. Several institutions set higher marks, with the University of Ibadan, the University of Lagos and Obafemi Awolowo University at 200, and Pan-Atlantic University at 220.
Demand for places continues to rise. JAMB figures show that 2,243,816 candidates registered for the 2026 UTME, a 10.5 per cent increase on 2025. Lagos alone accounted for 381,814 registrations. The board has put the number of candidates admitted in 2025 at just over one million, a reminder of how many applicants are left competing for limited official places each year.
That pressure has a long history of spilling outside the formal system. According to figures released by the Federal Ministry of Education, institutions conducted 255,928 illegal admissions in 2015 for the 2014 session, and 190,407 in 2016. The figure fell to 43,852 in 2017, an 83 per cent drop over two years, as CAPS came into use and enforcement tightened.
The problem did not disappear. In November 2021, JAMB disclosed that institutions had confessed to admitting 706,189 candidates outside CAPS between 2017 and 2020. The board later said close to one million such cases had been declared. It allowed them to be condoned, citing sympathy for the students and the resources already spent on their training.
Many of those students learnt the cost late. Without a JAMB admission letter, graduates have been unable to mobilise for the National Youth Service Corps or obtain exemption letters. JAMB has also disowned fees of between ₦10,000 and ₦80,000 that it said some institutions charged candidates for so-called regularisation. In August 2024, the board gave institutions one final month, from August 1, to disclose candidates illegally admitted before 2017, warning that undisclosed cases would never be recognised.
Federal authorities have since hardened their language. At the May policy meeting, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, said admissions conducted outside the CAPS framework “are illegal and will not be recognised.” Then Registrar Is-haq Oloyede told the same meeting that disciplinary action had begun against offending institutions. He said there were cases in which higher scorers lost places to lower scorers, and that a case involving 11 universities over alleged illegal admissions was before the court.
In July, JAMB said candidates admitted through the back door risked being left off official matriculation lists. The National Universities Commission announced plans at the time to step up monitoring of universities that admit beyond their approved carrying capacity.
Monday’s warning is among the first admission advisories since Segun Aina, a Professor of Computer Engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, assumed office as Registrar on July 31, 2026. He succeeded Oloyede, who had led the board since August 2016. On taking office, Aina pledged to deploy technology, investigations and legal action to protect the integrity of the board’s processes.
For candidates, JAMB’s advice is to confirm any offer on CAPS and accept it there before paying fees or resuming. With public universities expected to wrap up admissions this month, the board has not said whether it will extend the deadline.