Joint Admission And Matriculation Board (JAMB) Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede has come out to defend the use of National Identity Number (NIN) for the registration of the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination is a computer-based standardized examination for prospective undergraduates in Nigeria.
Ishaq revealed this in Abuja on Friday during a virtual meeting with owners of Computer Based Test Centres, service providers and other stakeholders to kickstart the 2021 UTME registration.
He explained that the examination board introduced this new measures to checkmate examination malpractices.
He 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. There is insecurity in the country and we know that many of these problems are there because we have identification problems. We can’t identify every citizen, where he is and what he is doing.”
He also revealed that candidates must make use of accessible SIM cards which have never been used for UTME registration.
He stated that discussions were ongoing with the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, to grant a conditioned waiver to an estimated 20 per cent of candidates without SIM cards.
