Suspend national ID for UTME, Reps tell JAMB – TheNigerialawyer

The House of Representatives has asked the Joint Admissions and
Matriculation Board to suspend its new policy requiring the
National Identity Number for candidates to register for the Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

At plenary on Wednesday, Zainab Gimba moved a motion calling for
the suspension of the policy till 2021.

While unanimously adopting the motion, the House commended JAMB
for collaborating with the National Identity Management Commission
towards a more transparent UTME process.

The lawmakers, however, urge the board to extend the use of the
national ID “in order to allow more time and better awareness for
prospective candidates”.

They also urged the NIMC to establish more registration centres,
while mandating the House Committees on Tertiary Education &
Services, and the NIMC to identify the challenges facing the
commission with a view to tackling them and increasing its funding
if necessary.

Gimba said the compulsory use of prospective candidates’ data
from the NIMC’s database would remove the need for JAMB to capture
the biometrics of candidates, thereby helping to curb multiple
registration and other forms of malpractices.

She said, “The House is worried however that many prospective
candidates from remote locations in the country may not be able to
register for the UTME due to non-registration with the NIMC. The
notice given by JAMB is too sudden and not sufficient to allow all
prospective UTME candidates to be captured by the NIMC.

“The House recalls that sometime this year, an official of the
NIMC disclosed that less than 20 per cent of Nigerians were
captured in the NIMC’s database. Though there has been a massive
turnout of Nigerians to be captured by the NIMC, most have been
hindered by infrastructural challenges like poor internet network,
power failure/no power supply and sometimes inadequate manpower or
equipment to attend to them.

“The House is also concerned that younger Nigerians and minors
constitute the larger number of those yet to be captured by the
NIMC mainly due to the prior registration criteria which captured
persons aged 18 and above only. JAMB needs to establish a better
collaboration with the NIMC, state and local governments for
efficient and less-stressful registration of prospective
candidates.”