By Adesina Wahab, Adeola Badru and James Ogunnaike

Not a few candidates, parents and guardians heaved a sigh of relief when the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, shifted the use of National Identity Number, NIN, for registration for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME till next year.

Their relief was because of the agonising pain they go through trying to register with the Nigerian Identity Management Commission, NIMC, and the thinking that the registration for the UTME would now be seamless and without further hitches since NIN is no longer a requirement for this year’s exercise.

However, since the registration started some days ago; the exercise has been dogged by some bottlenecks, majorly technical and internet related.

Profile code hiccups

A candidate, Emmanuel Adisa, narrated how it took him days to generate profile code to begin the registration exercise. ” To generate profile code, one has to send one’s name to a short code service 55019, but that has been difficult. Many candidates sent it and for days there was no feedback. People were told your request is being processed.

READ ALSO: UTME: JAMB withdraws 11 centres’ licenses for charging exorbitant amount

“It took and is still taking days for the candidates to get feedback for them to continue with the process. Also payment through Remita has been difficult. A man who tried to pay for a candidate had his account debited twice. How would he get his money refunded? One hopes the hitches will be addressed as soon as possible,” he said.

Extortion of candidates, parents

A visit by our correspondent in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital to Southwest Resource Centre, which houses one of the CBT Centres in the state, revealed that each student was required to pay N700 to a bank with which a special code would be generated.

The students will now take the code to the registration centre.

Speaking with the Co-ordinator of the Centre, Mrs. Chinyere Obiajulu, she said each student pays N3,500 for JAMB registration, while the centre collects N500 as administrative charge. However, it was gathered that some private centres also charge students and some parents exorbitant amount ranging from N25,000 to N30.000.
Speaking with our correspondent, a center operator said the money included some other things like preparing the candidates for the examination.

Server failure

In interviews with Vanguard, some candidates in Ibadan, Oyo State capital said JAMB’s server failed to respond from time to time as a result of either poor connectivity or data overload. One of the UTME candidates, Bolanle Adedeji, stated that the stress she had encountered in the course of registering for the examination was uncalled for.

She noted that: ” In the last few days the registration started, I have been groaning over poor network connectivity on my phone, even at their accredited CBT centres for registration.To complicate matters for me, I was told JAMB’s server failed to respond as a result of either poor connectivity or data overload.”

Another candidate, Femi Odekunle, also shared similar experience, adding that the queue for the collection of NIN before its suspension had already killed his morale.

“We are faced with another problem of getting the registration done owing to slow speed of internet services at CBT centres and we paid almost five thousand naira before obtaining the registration form,” he lamented.

However, some JAMB workers told Vanguard on the condition of anonymity that they too had kept sleepless nights in the office, trying to work on the poor internet services since the registration began.

Vanguard Nigeria News