The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has justified the directive on compulsory use of National Identity Number (NIN) for the registration of the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), saying this would help in checkmating examination malpractices and security threat.
The board Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede let this out on Friday, in Abuja during a virtual meeting with owners of Computer Based Test Centres, service providers and other stakeholders to kick-start the 2021 UTME registration.
He explained that the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, actually gave the directive for the Board to enforce the use of NIN as a prerequisite for UTME and Direct Entry registration.
The attempt to introduce NIN for UTME registration a few years ago was met with fierce resistance by prospective candidates because of low enrolment for the National Identity Card by Nigerians on the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) platform.
However, with the current massive registration to meet the deadline for NIN-SIM linkage, the Board is confident every Nigerian willing to sit for the 2021 examination or apply for Direct Entry, would have registered and obtained the NIN.
According to Oloyede, the use of NIN would check impersonation and multiple registrations by candidates which some of them use to commit examination fraud.
He noted that over 100 centres were delisted between 2020 and 2021 for various infractions including registration and examination malpractice.
The JAMB Registrar said: “We don’t even require the name of the candidate, we just want the NIN we will then do the needful to pull the data of the candidate and the process will go on from there.
“It is for security reasons; for us, at our small level it helps us to avoid impersonation but there is a bigger picture of insecurity in the country and we know that many of these problems we have is because we have identification problem, we cannot identify every citizen, where he is and what he is doing.
“Government is trying to ensure that we have some strategy for improving the security system and of course if those who are coming into the tertiary institution are exposed to this basic civil responsibility, it will be good to develop a culture of accountability because accountability starts from being identified.”
The JAMB Registrar spoke in Abuja, on Friday, during a virtual meeting with owners of Computer Based Test Centres, service providers and other stakeholders to kick-start the 2021 UTME registration.
Oloyede who noted that candidates must make use of accessible sim cards which has never been used for UTME registration said talks were ongoing with the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy to grant a conditioned waiver to an estimated 20 per cent of candidates without a sim card.
“We have told the National Communication Commission (NCC), approached the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy and we are hopeful that we will be granted waiver with, of course, conditionalities which we must ensure the candidates meet.
“Not all the candidates are without sim, 80 per cent of the candidates already have their number, we are talking of the 20 per cent and if we are fortunate enough to secure the waiver of the minister through the NCC, we will go ahead to make sure there is full compliance to the conditionalities because it is in our interest as a nation that those things that are put in place should be allowed to protect all of us.”
Oloyede also warned that no CBT is allowed to register candidates for NIN, noting that any centre found to engage in such an act would be sanctioned.
“No JAMB accredited CBT centre is allowed as an agent of NIMC in the enrollment of NIN,” he said.
He warned owners of CBT centres against examination malpractice, saying any centre found to be involved in examination fraud would be suspended.
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