…..abolishes bulk PIN purchase, registration
From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has confirmed that registration for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) has hit 1.16 million.
It also maintained that the registration deadline for the exercise will not be extended, thus urging interested candidates who are yet to register to take advantage of the remaining days to get registered.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed the information at the weekend when he visited some Computer Based Test (CBT) centres in Abuja, notably, Total Child International School, Dutse; JAMB Abuja zonal office, Life Camp; Global Distance Learning Institute and Sascon International College, Abuja respectively, to assess the ongoing UTME registration exercise.
He accused some schools in Abuja of extorting candidates to register them for the UTME.
Prof. Oloyede said: “Registration is going on well across the country except that some schools and CBT centres are sabotaging our efforts. Some of them have engaged in sharp practices and extortion of candidates. But we are engaging and punishing them adequately.
“We must know that UTME is not a school based examination. It’s for individual candidates. Unfortunately, some schools are engaging in some form of extortion. You can see what some schools are doing school. A school in Abuja was caught collecting N30,000 from candidates in the name of JAMB instead of the approved N3,500 fee. Both the candidates and one of their teachers confirmed the development.
“Some of these schools engage in bulk PIN purchase and registration, and at the end, they would mix up the telephone numbers of the candidates, thus making things, particularly communication with JAMB difficult for the candidates.
“So, once they keep the telephone numbers of candidates, it is unlikely that the candidates would receive information from JAMB when contacted in the cause of this exercise.
“For instance, if we want to make a change in their timetable, and send text messages to them, it won’t get to them. After they have graduated from the school and, possibly, want to do change of course, they won’t have access to their profile page. We would take adequate steps to make sure that we stop that.”
As the result of the development, JAMB Registrar, announced the suspension of bulk PIN purchase and registration to curb the identified alleged extortions being done on candidates by some schools and CBT centres.
Prof. Oloyede added: “Going forward, we would direct every CBT centre operator to stop doing bulk purchase of PIN and bulk registration. And punishment awaits CBT centre that violates the directive.
“If a CBT center operator sell more than one PIN to a source or collect money for more than one PIN from a source then we would sanction the CBT centre.”
He, thus, encouraged candidates to freely report cases of extortion taking advantage of a code provided for candidates to reach JAMB when they come across any case of extortion, while promising there will be a reward for such act.