The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB says it has so far, registered over 500,000 candidates for the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination UTME.
JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, who disclosed this while monitoring the registration exercise in Bwari, Abuja, on Thursday, said the board’s target is to register a total of 1.5 million candidates before the March 26, 2022 deadline.
Oloyede said the board also plans to register at least 50,000 candidates per day and has succeeded in registering about 70,000 two days ago, adding that the exercise has been mostly successful and 99% of problems encountered by candidates were self-inflicted because they played into the hands of fraudsters.
While appealing to non- candidates to keep off registration centres, he urged parents to allow their children to read the registration instructions and follow warning candidates not to divulge their codes to third parties as fraudsters could use them to manipulate their profiles to their own detriment.
Missing SIM cards
Oloyede said JAMB is working cautiously on sorting out the problem of candidates whose SIM cards are missing, in order not to expose candidates to manipulation by fraudsters.
“We are working with the telecommunication companies in such a way that when that happens, we are putting a system in place; telephone update where you would use your thumbprint to show that it was the same thumbprint, then we would allow the system to change to another SIM for you.
“But if at the point of testing your thumbs, the finger prints are not coming up, we would leave you to go back and do a welcome-back. We are doing this but we have to do it with caution because that can open students to unnecessary exposure of their personal data.
“We are not asking them to wait we are saying, we are looking into the possibility of what we can do.”
He added that JAMB will talk to all agencies involved in the registration process.
He said the Board has found three or four vendors wanting and are currently undergoing interactions with the appropriate office, adding that some of the directors are interrogating the vendors and once JAMB is convinced that they have done the wrong thing, it would blacklist the agents and also warn the vendor.
On the new approach of candidates filling and submitting hardcopy forms before commencing registration, he said the new method was introduced because candidates waste a lot of money trying to change names.
He added that after filling the form, candidates must confirm that everything is right and the form would be uploaded in the candidate’s handwriting, which explains why at registration points, JAMB has double screens, one facing the candidate and the other facing the official carrying out the registration.
Nneka Ukachukwu
