The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced a new deadline for candidates with outstanding admission offers from the 2021 to 2025 admission exercises to accept or reject their offers. The new deadline is November 30, 2026, following a temporary disruption of its Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS). The Board had earlier set September 30, 2026, as the deadline but extended it due to the technical issue.
The temporary disruption of CAPS lasted for about 96 hours, affecting the admission process for many candidates. JAMB described the latest extension as the final one and urged all affected candidates to complete the process before the new deadline. Candidates who fail to accept or reject their outstanding offers by November 30 will no longer be able to do so under the current window.
The extension is particularly important for candidates whose admission records were not reflected on the matriculation list. Such discrepancies could affect their eligibility for certain benefits, including participation in the National Youth Service Corps scheme. Candidates who accept their outstanding offers will be able to print their admission letters, while those who reject them will have their status reverted to “Not Admitted” on their CAPS dashboards.
JAMB said the exercise would enable it to update its records and ensure that the national admission database accurately reflects candidates’ current admission status. The Board also clarified that candidates who are no longer studying at institutions where they were previously offered admission, or who have changed programmes, may accept the outstanding offers and subsequently apply for the appropriate correction or deletion of the previous admission where necessary.
Candidates currently pursuing a second degree but holding unaccepted admission offers from previous years may also reject those offers without affecting their ongoing studies. JAMB further assured candidates who have received admission offers for the 2026 academic session but still have outstanding offers from previous years that rejecting the earlier offers would not affect their current admission.
According to the Board, all outstanding offers from the 2021 to 2025 admission exercises that remain neither accepted nor rejected by the new deadline will automatically revert to “Not Admitted” in its records. JAMB therefore urged all affected candidates to take advantage of the extension and regularise their admission records before the final deadline.
The Board warned that any subsequent request to update an admission record would attract the applicable penalty fee. JAMB encouraged candidates to take advantage of the extension and resolve their admission status to avoid any complications in the future.
Key points
- The new deadline for accepting or rejecting admission offers is November 30, 2026.
- Candidates who fail to accept or reject their offers by the deadline will have their status reverted to “Not Admitted”.
- The extension aims to enable candidates to regularise their admission records and avoid complications in the future.
