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The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has lauded the introduction of the National Identification Number (NIN) in its examination exercise.

This, the board said, it helped in eliminating multiple registrations, impersonation and other malpractices associated with examinations.

The JAMB Spokesperson, Dr Fabian Benjamin, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday.

He said that the partnership with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), which mandated the use of NIN in the registration process, made it virtually impossible for hired examination takers to register multiple times.

He, however, refuted a media report that claimed that the introduction of NIN affected the revenue of JAMB and caused it to drop to N5.8 billion.

Benjamin maintained that JAMB was neither a revenue generation agency nor aspired to be one.

“JAMB is not a revenue generation entity and, as such, is not interested in the ever-ballooning number of candidates.

“Rather, JAMB is concerned with how to address loopholes being used by fraudsters to distort national data in a bid to compromise public examinations.

“As far as the board is concerned, having a realistic number of candidates sitting for its examination is a major achievement which only the partnership with NIMC has made possible.

“It is our resolve not to ever compromise on the integrity of its processes on account of generating fat operating surpluses,” he said.

Benjamin noted that NIN was a good initiative because it had helped to clean the system and restored its credibility.

According to him, it is an error of fact to denigrate the wonderful contribution of NIN to UTME registration process by insinuating that it had deleterious effect on the financial base of the board.

“On the contrary, JAMB greatly appreciates the partnership with NIMC which has led to the inadvertent benefit of revealing the actual number of candidates registered annually.

“Consequently, it is the board’s firm belief that the introduction of NIN has helped in addressing one of the fundamental channels of perpetrating examination malpractice by way of multiple applications, among others.”

News Agency Of Nigeria

The registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board, Prof. Is’aq Oloyede, has said that the board will decide if there is a need to extend the registration period and change the date of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

Oloyede made this known today, at a zoom meeting titled, ‘Briefing session for the committees on 2021 UTME’.

The UTME had been slated to hold between June 5 and 19.

Oloyede, however, stated that the Mock examination would begin on May 20 as stipulated earlier.

The registrar explained that “Presently, we have 1.2million candidates that have registered but we expect 1.9million. 600,000 candidates had made attempt to register but because of NIN they could not. We want to do an appraisal of all the issues to know if we are extending registration or not.

“Extending registration may not be the solution if we found out that we can give 80 per cent of those who have made attempt another password, then there will be no need to extend registration.

“We have to determine where the problem is coming before we can say we are extending. After today, we will address the press tomorrow on the outcome of the meeting on the main examination date and registration. We want to assess what is happening.”

The zoom meeting had in attendance stakeholders who all stated their challenges while some others appreciated the innovations and transparency which Oloyede brought to the fore in the yearly conduct of UTME.