A CANDIDATE, Owoeye Daniella Jesudunsin, has emerged as the overall top scorer in the 2026 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), scoring 372 marks.
The result was contained in a list of top-performing candidates announced by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board(JAMB) during the 2026 Policy Meeting on Admissions to Tertiary Institutions held in Abuja on Monday.
Owoeye, who sat for the examination in Ogun State but hails from Ekiti State, chose the University of Lagos (University of Lagos) to study Medicine and Surgery (MBBS).
The ICIR reports that 2,243,816 candidates registered for the 2026 UTME, representing a 10.5 per cent increase when compared with those who registered to write the examination in 2025.
Lagos State recorded the highest number of registrations for the 2026 edition with 381,814 candidates, followed by Ogun (137,156), Oyo (122,662), Kaduna (103,498), and the Federal Capital Territory (102,961).
Outside Nigeria, candidates also registered from Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Burkina Faso, the United Kingdom, Ghana, Gambia, and South Africa, though in small numbers.
The 2026 UTME was conducted across about 966 Computer-Based Test centres nationwide, with examinations split into four daily sessions to ease congestion and improve monitoring.
The board described the exercise as one of the most coordinated large-scale examinations in the country, involving extensive logistics, personnel deployment, and digital verification systems.
According to the released data, top candidates scored between 367 and 372, with their performance spread across various institutions of choice and states of origin.
The candidate with the highest score, Jesudunni, was followed by Enwere Kingsley Ikenna, who scored 370 and chose NILE University for Computer Science, and Bamisile Ayomide Emmanuel with 369, who opted for the Federal University of Technology, Akure (Federal University of Technology Akure) to study Software Engineering.
Other high scorers recorded 368 marks, including candidates who applied to institutions such as the University of Ibadan, University of Benin, Pan-Atlantic University, University of Port Harcourt, and ABUAD, with programmes spanning Mechatronics, Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics and Mechanical Engineering.
Several candidates scored 367 marks, with institutions including Covenant University and the University of Lagos also appearing among their choices.
Over one million candidates gained admission in 2025
JAMB also presented a breakdown of the 2025 admission exercise, showing that out of 2,007,312 applicants, 1,009,044 candidates were admitted into tertiary institutions nationwide.
The data, revealed that candidates scoring 250 and above enjoyed higher admission rates, with those in the 300+ category recording a 75 per cent admission rate.
However, the bulk of admissions came from candidates in the 160–199 score range, which accounted for nearly half a million successful admissions, reflecting variations in institutional cut-off marks and course demand.
Lower score bands, particularly 120–139 and 100–119, recorded significantly fewer admissions.
