By Chinyere Nwachukwu
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has urged candidates for this year’s UTME not to allow a third party do the registration for them.
Registrar of the board, Prof. Is’haq Oloyede gave the advice while monitoring the ongoing exercise on Friday in Lagos.
According to him, research has shown that most of the errors recorded on candidates’ data are traced to third party registration, and some of them can be costly.
He said that such registration by proxy also encouraged extortion.
“The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is not a school examination like WASSCE, where you can compile list of candidates before forwarding to the examination body.
“In the case of the UTME, we deal directly with our candidates. They should be allowed to do the registration by themselves.
“We must insist on doing the right thing now, by not allowing anyone to do the registration for the candidates,” he said.
The registrar said that already, some 1.2 million candidates had so far registered for the UTME as of Friday, out of the anticipated 1.5 million.
He said that the registration for the Direct Entry candidates had yet to begin.
The registrar described the registration process as seamless nationwide, while also commending members of staff of the board for a job well done.
He, however, decried the poor turnout of candidates in the centres visited, urging them to hurry and get themselves registered before the end of the exercise.
“What we have observed in these centres is the absence of candidates coming in to do their registration for the examination.
“As you have noticed, there are empty seats all over the place in these centres because candidates are not forthcoming.
“I can say for two reasons or either of the two reasons. One is that given the seamless arrangements that we have made, it is possible for all serious candidates to have registered and therefore, you cannot manufacture more candidates.
“This is despite the fact that we still have 15 days to go to the end of the exercise. We thank God for that and we also thank God for our partners.
“NIMC is doing a great job now, no longer the way it used to be. The staff of the board too must be commended for their commitment to the job. They are doing well.
“I have practically been to all parts of the country, to see what is going on and I can tell you that it has been hitch free.
“The second one, which is the unfortunate one, is that of prospective candidates who will not come forward now for their registration, until three or five days to the end of the exercise,” said.
According to him, there will be no extension of the registration of candidates for this year’s UTME.
He urged candidates to intensify their efforts in ensuring that they get registered within the time frame for the exercise in any of the 780 centres across the country.
“We still have 15 days to go. Just yesterday alone, we registered 84,000 candidates but we made provision for 100,000.
“The day before yesterday, we registered over 20,000, instead of 100,000 and so far today, we have registered about 39,000 and the day is far spent, which means we will not be able to register 100,000 candidates.
“Many of the CBT centres are doing well. Look at WAEC. They are doing very well and I am not surprised. This is what it should be.
“Some persons who are insinuating that we do not have the capacity, as you can see, WAEC has scaled it up even to their main examination now.
“If we had not done what we had to do, at that time, where will these candidates come from? Where will the CBT centres that WAEC is accrediting come from?
“So, what we need to do is to start from somewhere. The whole world cannot be going in one direction and we will be going toward the opposite,” the registrar said.
He said what was needed was to increase digital literacy of the people, both young and old, and then, keep on moving.
“We will not wait until we have all the powers in this world; we should just continue to do the best that we can do,” he said.
Oloyode said that the board increased the service charge for the CBT centres, but it did not affect the normal charge of registration fees.(NAN)
