The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB has suspended the use of the National Identification Number, NIN for registration in the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination UTME.
JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, who announced this while briefing journalists in Abuja, the nation’s capital said the move was to provide more time for candidates to get their national identification numbers.
The JAMB Registrar said the suspension was also to allow for time to address some technical challenges being experienced by candidiates
Professor Oloyede asked candidates to disregard the use of NIN and adhere to other means of registration made available by the board
He said JAMB may consider the use of NIN in the 2021 examinations.
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Director-General General, National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, Aliyu Azeez who was present at the briefing regretted the suspension blaming it on inadequate capturing centres across the country
He said instead of setting up about 4,000 centres required to handle the rush for registration by the candidates, the Commission only has just around 1,000 centres across the country.
JAMB Registrar had uptil the last week of December 2019 vowed that it will adhere strictly to the use of NIN which is a Federal Government policy asking agencies like JAMB to rely on the data from NIMC.
JAMB had on December 23, 2019 announced that sale of forms for 2020 UTME will begin on Monday, January 13, 2020 and the test will hold in March 2020. While suspending the use of NIN, the Registrar however did not talk about any shift in dates for the registration and test
