The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has extended the deadline for candidates offered admission from 2021 to date to accept or reject their outstanding admission offers.

The Board, which had earlier fixed August 31 as the deadline, extended it to September 30, describing the new date as the final opportunity for all affected candidates.

JAMB’s Public Communication Adviser, Dr Fabian Benjamin, announced the extension in a statement issued in Abuja on Saturday.

He said the extension applies to candidates with regular admission offers as well as those with Centralised University International Admission (CUIIA) offers.

Benjamin urged affected candidates to accept or reject their outstanding offers before the new deadline, warning that failure to act would have consequences for the status of their admissions.

“Candidates should not wait until the deadline, as failure to take action within the stipulated period will have consequences for the status of such admissions,” he said.

According to him, candidates who accept their offers will be able to print and obtain their admission letters, while those who reject them will have their dashboards reverted to “Not Admitted”.

He said the process would enable JAMB to update its records and ensure that national admission data accurately reflect candidates’ current status.

Benjamin explained that candidates who were no longer studying at the institutions where their previous admissions were offered could accept the outstanding admission and subsequently apply for the appropriate correction or deletion of the admission.

The same provision, he said, applies to candidates currently enrolled in different programmes, allowing the Board to properly update their admission status and records.

The JAMB spokesman advised candidates already pursuing a second degree but with an unaccepted previous admission offer to reject the outstanding offer and continue with their current programmes.

He also assured candidates offered admission in the 2026 admission exercise that rejecting an earlier outstanding offer would not affect their current admission.

“The board wishes to make it clear that candidates who have been offered admission in the 2026 admission exercise but still have a previous admission offer pending should not be apprehensive,” Benjamin said.

“Such candidates may reject the previous admission offer, and doing so will have no adverse effect whatsoever on their 2026 admission,” he added.

He said the extension was intended to give affected candidates one final opportunity to indicate clearly whether they wished to accept or reject their outstanding offers, while helping the Board maintain accurate and reliable national admission records.

Benjamin warned that at the expiration of the September 30 deadline, all outstanding admission offers from 2021 to date that have neither been accepted nor rejected would automatically be reverted to “Not Admitted” status.

He urged all affected candidates to take action immediately, stressing that failure to accept an admission offer within the stipulated period would render the offer invalid.