By Felix Khanoba
The Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede,
says the decision of the Board to introduce the use of National Identification Number (NIN) for registration of candidates in the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is to checkmate examination malpractices.
Oloyede, who said the directive for the use of NIN as a prerequisite for registration was from the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, noted that the motive was also for security reasons.
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’s for security reasons; for us at our small level it helps us to avoid impersonation but there is a bigger picture of insecurity in the country and we know that many of these problems we have is because we have identification problems, we cannot identify every citizen, where he is and what he is doing.
“Government is trying to ensure that we have some strategy for improving the security system and of course if those who are coming into the tertiary institution are exposed to this basic civil responsibility, it will be good to develop a culture of accountability because accountability starts from being identified.”
The JAMB boss spoke in Abuja on Friday during a virtual meeting with owners of Computer Based Test (CBT) centres, service providers and other stakeholders to kickstart the 2021 UTME registration.
Oloyede who noted that candidates must make use of accessible sim cards which have never been used for UTME registration, said talks were ongoing with the minister of Communication and Digital Economy to grant a conditioned waiver to an estimated 20 percent of candidates without a sim card.
