On Friday the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said it made use of the National Identity Number (NIN) for registration of the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) compulsory, in a bid to checkmate examination malpractices.
Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB’s Registrar, stated this during a virtual meeting with owners of Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres on Friday.
According to Oloyede, the idea was also for security reasons.
Oloyede 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 are caused by identification problem, 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,” he said.
Oloyede, however, noted that candidates must make use of sim cards which has never been used for UTME registration.
He also warned that no CBT is allowed to register candidates for NIN.
