By Tom Chiahemen (ABUJA) –
Unless the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), decides to extend the registration deadline for the 2021 Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), over 600,000 prospective candidates will be robbed of the opportunity of participating in the process.
With barely 42 hours to the close of the registration exercise, only about 1.1million of the 1.9million candidates expected to register, have been able to successfully link their national identification number (NIN) and mobile numbers to the registration, a policy decision announced by the Nigerian government early this year.
If this happens, the Board may also have to extend the actual date and period for the conduct of the UTME, originally scheduled to hold from June 5 -19, 2021.
Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, who gave this indication in Abuja on Friday, noted that so far, only about 1.1million out of the 1.9million candidates expected to register for the examination have been able to successfully register, using their NIN.
Professor Oloyede was speaking during the JAMB briefing session for the various committees set up to enhance and facilitate the conduct of this year’s UTME.
He believed that the critical meeting of stakeholders slated for Friday through Saturday would consider the issue and decide whether or not to shift the date for the actual examination forward to enable mor candidates to register.
He also disclosed that the Board was working together with the National Identify Management Corporation (NIMC) to solve the technical problems that were making the successful linkage of NIN with UTME registration difficult.
The Board had last month announced as part of the 2021 UTME registration process, that candidates must provide their NIN and mobile number that should be linked to the registration.
Head of Media and information of the public examinations body, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, was quoted to have said: “Before the registrations, the board had concluded all arrangements to use the NIN for its UTME/DE registration exercise, but owing to some minor hitches, it could not proceed with the process but gave the nation sufficient notice that it would be a major part of the 2021/22 exercise.”
The Registrar however said that the Mock examination would still hold on Saturday, May 28, 2021.
“The Mock is an optional examination that is meant to test our (JAMB’s) systems and for the candidates to test their actual abilities,” he explained.
For the actual UTME, the Board has created a total of 104 examination towns and 802 centres across Nigeria, just as it has taken steps to ascertain the pictures and names on the candidates’ examination or notification slips belong to the same person.
In this regard, “there will be two pictures of each candidate’s slip. The first picture is that of the person who registered at the point of registration, while the second picture is that of the owner who registered with NIN. The objective is to ascertain that the two pictures are one and the same,” Professor Oloyede explained.