The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has suspended the use of the National Identification Number (NIN) as requirement for registration for the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) registration and Direct entry.
The suspension is due to the inability of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to meet up with registration of prospective candidates expected to number well over a million.
“Due to technical reasons, we have seen that this is no longer realistic and therefore not attainable and it’s on this reason we are suspending the use of NIN this year till the subsequent year, 2021,” JAMB registrar, Is-haq Oloyede announced at a press conference in Abuja on Saturday. He said the use of NIN would take effect in 2021.
The unfortunate suspension comes just a few days after NIMC authorities had assured BusinessDay that they were capable of executing this huge task and had already prioritised attention to the intending candidates.
Oloyede explained that the board and the NIMC came to the “sad” decision because it found that the use of NIN would not be attainable in the 2020 exams due to the short time frame for the intending applicants to enrol, technical issues being faced in the NIN enrolment amongst others.
The registrar said the board could not also adhere to the advice to shift the registration and exam dates because according to him, the educational sector wass already programmed, hence the need to rather suspend the use of NIN.
He explained that the registration for 2020 UTME and direct entry which would start on Monday 13th till February 17th would only last for five weeks”, and the exams must be written on the already scheduled date before the commencement of WASSCE, NECO and NABTEB.
“We could not shift the registration and the examination because every minute counts and on this we came to a very sad decision yesterday that we are not going to use NIN as prerequisite for registration”, Oloyede said.
The suspension according to the registrar would enable the board and the NIMC address the challenges they faced and also give the intending applicants more time to obtain the NIN.
“All candidates would have been given a one-year notice and will have opportunity to do their registration”, the registrar added.
Oloyele said the decision will be communicated to all states of the federation and that candidates would simply follow the same process of registration as they did last year and the first step is to send their name to the short code 55019.
He however noted that the decision does not affect its staff, as all 11,000 JAMB permanent and ad-hoc staff who will participate in this year will still be required to submit their NIN for verification.
The registrar further pointed out that the initial decision to use NIN was made because it is in compliance with statutory provision, was based on law and was also a directive. But more importantly, according to him, is the fact that it is in line with international best practice.
The Director-General, NIMC, Aliyu Abubakar, also speaking at the conference, said despite the benefits of the use of NIN to eliminate fraud and exam malpractices related to identity, the decision became necessary as it would allow the NIMC roll out more centres to accommodate every intending applicant.
He said NIN centres are currently overwhelmed due to the upsurge and demand within the limited centres which caused the review and rethink for the suspension.
Abubakar said there were only 1,000 centres, adding that at least 4,000 centres were required for NIMC to be able to carry out the exercise nationwide.
The DG further noted that the suspension would give more time for intending applicants to obtain NIN, allow NIMC roll out more registration centres and equipment nationwide under the digital identity ecosystem and provide identity and verification services anytime anywhere.
He therefore appealed to the general public to ensure that they register to obtain their NIN within the new timeline to avoid further enforcement and last-minute registration.
