Warning: Attempt to read property "post_excerpt" on null in /home/kogiflam/public_html/wp-content/themes/morenews/single.php on line 55
About 600,000 prospective candidates are yet to receive the required codes to be ‘transported’ to their mobile lines.
Kogiflame
Barring last minute change, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) will announce the extension of the deadline for the ongoing registration for its 2021 unified tertiary matriculation examination (UTME) and the direct entry (DE) programme.
This decision may not be unconnected to the difficulties being experienced by candidates in their attempts to generate the required codes towards setting up profiles using their unique national identification number (NIN).
PREMIUM TIMES has exclusively learnt that as of Wednesday afternoon, roughly 72 hours to the May 15 deadline set by the examination body, only 1,012,000 candidates have so far registered for the UTME and about 30,000 candidates for the DE programme.
This figure is low when compared to about 1.9 million UTME and 200,000 DE candidates already captured within the same period in 2020.
Investigations revealed that as of Wednesday about 600,000 prospective candidates, who have initiated the registration process, are yet to receive the required codes meant to be transported to their mobile lines by the network operators.
Challenges
Some officials of the examination body, who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES confidentially, claiming they were not authorised to speak on the matter, said the problem is caused by the adoption of the mandatory use of NIN for the registration.
“The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) that is responsible for the issuance of NIN is expected to generate the linked number to be transported to candidates as soon as they input their required USSD code. But this has been difficult for the agency due largely to inadequate manpower and lack of required technical skill,” one of the sources told our reporter on the phone.
NIMC
Another source blamed the mobile telecommunication operators for the delayed response to transporting codes generated to candidates, saying this is the worst outing being recorded by JAMB since the adoption of the USSD system in its registration.
Some ad hoc staffers of the examination body, who were meant to register using the same procedure ahead of the examination, have also expressed frustration in their attempts to be registered for the exercise
