The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, is set to extend registration for the examination by two weeks, while the examination itself would be postponed by another two weeks.
This is to prevent a situation whereby over 600,000 prospective candidates would miss this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
The extension in registration and the shift in the commencement of the examination would be suggested to stakehoders by the Registrar, Prof. Isaq Oloyede, during a meeting scheduled for late Friday.
The registration for the UTME had earlier been scheduled to end on Saturday May 15, but with the look of things, it may now be extended to May 29, 2021.
The examination, which is computer-based, earlier scheduled for June 5-19, may now start on June 19 and terminate on July 3, 2021.
However, the mock exam would still hold on May 20, and it is a voluntary exercise for interested candidates.
Sources told our corespondent that the steps became inevitable because as at Thursday night only about 1.3 million candidates had registered for the exam.
This is a far cry from the expected figure of over 2 million candidates.
Last year, 2.1 million candidates sat for the same exam.
The problem with this year’s registration is the inability of many applicants to link their National Identification Number, NIN, to their applications.
It’s gathered that the frustration by parents and candidates over the NIN linkage.
Some of the candidates told our correspondent that they have spent thousands of naira on airtime without successfully linking their NIN to their applications.
The government made the NIN compulsory this year after the idea was jettisoned last year following hiccups that dodged getting the NIN registration exercise.
However, the situation was exacerbated this year when the government made NIN compulsory for all Nigerians of registrable age.
Before now the National Identification Management Commission, NIMC, the agency saddled with generating NIN for the citizens, boasted that it was up to the task.
The Head of Corporate Affairs of NIMC, Mr Kayode Adegoke, had given the assurance that the agency would be up to the task, but the reverse seem to be the case now.
