The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) may conduct a second 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination for candidates with genuine registration challenges.
The Registrar of the board, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, made the disclosure on Wednesday in Lagos while monitoring the profiling of candidates with 2021 UTME registration challenges.-Advertisement-
“So far, we have just 17, 758 candidates with challenges that had been profiled, nationwide.
the end of the entire exercise, we may have to conduct another examination for those with genuine cases after the main UTME slated for June 19 to July 3,” he said.
He reiterated the board’s commitment to ensuring that every Nigerian child desirous of tertiary education would be given an equal opportunity.
“Since I came here this morning and interacted with candidates, I have discovered that most of them are largely unserious and are basically the cause of most of their challenges.
We keep hearing flimsy excuses such as my lesson teacher used his phone to generate the profile code, our tutorial centre helped us to register and I was not in town.
“Other reasons advanced are: I used my mother’s NIN to generate my profile code, my mummy did the registration for me,” he said.
According to the registrar, some candidates were honest enough to say they did not have money to procure the UTME form.
“We have also seen cases where rather than send their NIN to 55019, candidates sent it to 55012, while others sent the same command with postpaid phones rather than pre-paid,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that over 500,000 candidates had claimed they were unable to register for the examination within the given time frame – before May 15. JAMB later extended the registration to May 29.
The candidates cited an inability to generate a profile code and difficulty in obtaining the National Identification Number (NIN).
The board had insisted that no candidate would be allowed to sit for the examination without providing the NIN.
Following the challenges, the board allowed a two-week window for the affected people to lodge their complaints at its offices or registration centres and get help.
