By Ayo Onikoyi

A recent Computer Science graduate of the University of Benin in Nigeria has developed a smart new way to take student attendance in classrooms—using just a smartphone and your face.

Solomon Ubani, the creator of the system, built the app as part of his final year research project. The system, called the Smart Phone Based Student Attendance Monitoring System Using Facial Recognition, is designed to make attendance-taking faster, easier, and more accurate by using facial recognition technology. Instead of calling out names or passing around paper, students simply take a selfie with their smartphone to mark their presence in class.

Goodbye to Attendance Cheating and Wasting Time

One of the biggest problems with the traditional method of taking attendance is impersonation—students signing in for friends who aren’t actually in class. It also wastes valuable time, especially in large lecture halls.

“With this new system, only the real student can mark their attendance, and it takes just seconds,” Ubani explained.

Here’s how it works: The lecturer activates the attendance session on their phone. Students then use the app on their phones to register attendance with their faces. If their face matches the one already saved in the system, their name is automatically marked as present.

Built for Smartphones Students Already Own

What makes the app especially practical is that it runs on regular Android smartphones—devices most students already have. It doesn’t need any special cameras or expensive gadgets. The app was developed using tools that are widely available and works smoothly even on older phones with basic internet access.

The system includes three parts:

Lecturers can open and manage attendance sessions.

Students can mark their attendance with a quick selfie.

Admins (like school staff) can manage student info and generate reports at the end of the semester.

At the end of the term, the system can show how many classes each student attended and help determine who qualifies to sit for exams.

A Smarter Way to Learn

With the rising use of smartphones among students, Ubani believes this idea could be adopted widely, especially in schools and universities with large student populations.

“This system makes life easier for both lecturers and students. It saves time, reduces cheating, and helps schools keep better records,” he said.

As more institutions turn to digital solutions, innovations like this show how young Nigerian minds are using technology to solve everyday problems in education.