The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has identified the introduction of the National Identification Number, NIN, into the registration process as a causative factor to the dip in revenue it generated from the sale of forms for the 2021 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examinations and the Direct Entry Examinations.
The body said the NIN requirement hindered some prospective candidates to register, leading to the shortfall in the number of registered candidates and the accrued revenue generated from form sales.
Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB’s Director of Press and Public Relations, disclosed this in an interview with Punch on Sunday.
Earlier reports said the examination body generated N5,887,628,900 from the sale of forms for the 2021 UTME/DE.
It accounted for a drop from the N6,563,086,710 the board generated from forms in 2020.
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The figure was obtained under the financial inflow column of the board’s weekly bulletins for April and May 2021.
Speaking on the reason for the drop in the revenue generated from the forms, Benjamin said, “Last year, we had over two million candidates who registered for the examinations, both the UTME and DE. But this year, we are talking about between 1.3 million and 1.4 million. We know factors such as the introduction of the NIN to the registration process were responsible.
“From the information on ground, the NIN did not make lots of candidates register and you know before now we have been having cases of multiple registrations and that was why we brought in the NIN.”
The 2021 registration which started on April 10, 2021 ended on May 29,2021, though the board had disclosed its intention to give an extension to a few candidates with “special cases.”
In 2021, no fewer than 1,338,687 candidates registered for the UTME, while 75,328 registered for the Direct Entry examination. The figures contrast the total of over two million registered candidates for 2020.
Source: Punch