Yemisi Izuora
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has disclosed that so far 410,517 candidates have registered for its 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) nationwide.
The board’s Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede announced this to newsmen on the sidelines of an inspection tour of some accredited Computer Based Test (CBT) centres on Wednesday in Lagos.
According to Oloyede, 12,040 other prospective candidates have also been effectively captured for the Direct Entry (DE).
He said that so far, the registration process, which began nationwide on April 8, has been seamless.
The JAMB boss was speaking against the backdrop of reports by parents of some candidates that this year’s process of generating profile codes for the registration of the UTME, has been cumbersome and ineffective.
“Parents are part of the major challenges these children are having in climbing their academic ladder successfully.
“They indulge their children and lead them on, to commit many of the infractions we are talking about.
“They are the reason why we are having an upsurge in the number of under-aged candidates for these examinations.
“As a result, they seldom get things right, when the chips are down.
“Most of these candidates are not going through the process in the appropriate manner.
“There is just nothing stressful about the generation of the profile code if the steps are followed correctly.
“The right thing to do is to ensure that the word NIN is first typed, then space, then the NIN number of candidate and then forward to 55919,’’ he said.
Oloyede, however, noted that from Friday, April 30, a new format would be deployed to complement the current one being used for the generation of the profile codes.
“From Friday, we shall be deploying another method to get these profile codes and that is *55019*1*NIN number of candidate and #.
“This will complement the current SMS.’’
He said that candidates with the challenge of generating a profile code can also open a ticket on the JAMB website and within 24 hours, he or she will be told what to do.
“Having said this, it is also important to know that most of these parents also try using post-paid telephone numbers in generation profile codes for their children and wards.
“It is not that in such circumstances, such will not be achieved.
The registrar hinted that the examination, which is scheduled from June 5 to June 19, would be conducted in more than 700 accredited centres nationwide.