No fewer than one million candidates who applied for admissions into the universities with awaiting results may be denied admissions as many of the institutions have fixed dates to com­mence screening of prospective ap­plicants for the 2016/2017 academic session.

Saturday Sun investigations revealed that over one million candidates cur­rently in secondary schools that wrote the 2017 Universities Matriculation Tertiary Examination (UTME) did so as awaiting result candidates, which has been the practice.

In the May/June2017 West African Senior School Certificate Examina­tion (WASSCE), 1,552,772 million candidates registered for the school exam while over 1,200,000 million candidates also registered for the Se­nior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) conducted by the National Ex­aminations Council (NECO)

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is currently marking the answer scripts of candidates that wrote the May/June 2017 WASSCE and would release the results in August while the SSCE conducted by NECO is on going nationwide and would be concluded July ending.

Some of the universities have placed adverts inviting prospective candi­dates for the screening exercise for the 2016/2017 academic session start­ing this month even as WAEC is yet to release the May/June 2017 WAS­SCE result, while other candidates are currently writing the SSCE (NECO), which would be released either in Sep­tember or October.

In some of the advertisements for the screening text, the universities stated that applicants for admissions are to come with original UTME result, WAEC or NECO result, birth certifi­cates, scratch card, local government area and state of origin certificates, testimonial of schools attended, police and medical reports.

The implication is that many of the prospective candidates seeking admis­sion with awaiting results may miss the opportunity unless the Federal Govern­ment wades into the issue.

The fear of parents and schools is that some of the institutions would have concluded the screening exercise before WAEC and NECO release the results.

The Federal University of Petroleum Resources Effurun (FUPRE) in its ad­vert inviting applicants’ admission it reads: “Only candidates who have five credits at one or two sittings (includ­ing English Language and Mathemat­ics) are eligible to apply. Candidates awaiting results may, however, be con­sidered for the 2016/2017 admissions exercise.’’