A sample of the Nigerian National Identity Card
The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board , JAMB, says that starting from 2020, candidates will begin to register for their examination using the National Identity Management Number (NIM) to solve the challenges of multiple registrations.
JAMB’s Head of Media, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made this known at a one-day capacity building workshop organized by the National Examination Council (NECO) for Education Correspondents in Keffi, Nasarawa State.
Benjamin, who spoke on the topic ” Understanding Reporting in the 21st Century“, said the development would be facilitated through a partnership with the board and the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC.
Speaking on the importance of the registration stage of Jamb admission exams, Dr Fabian noted that experience had shown that malpractice in the conduct of public examination, especially the UTME, occurred at the registration stage.
He added that a porous registration exercise would compromise the examination process hence the need for proactive measures to secure the registration stage of the board’s exams.
” Four days ago, we cancelled the results of four candidates because of examination malpractices we discovered after the examinations. The board is on top of the situation as it has the determination and technology in place to forestall attempts at compromising the registration process.
Dr Fabian stressed that the longer the registration period of admission exams the more the chances fraudsters would have to perfect strategies to circumvent the process.
” So it is the main reason why our registration period is not more than 30days.
” We are hoping that by 2020 we will partner with NIMC which will assist us greatly and subsequently candidates must have a NIM to register for our examinations, ” he said.
On biometric challenges, he said the board was already working hard to ensure that by 2020 the issues of biometric problems in the course of registration would be over.
” In 2018, we have about 24,490 biometric challenges but we have been able to bring this down to 2000 in 2019 but as we intend to stand on our ground by 2020, on no biometrics no examinations, we will not have any biometric challenges.”
He further said all School based centers will not be allowed to participate in 2020 Jamb exams but will be considered if the computer based centers belongs to the secondary schools and the principal of the schools are responsible as administrators of the CBT centers.
Speaking on impersonation challenges facing the board, Dr Benjamin stated that for the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Exams UTME, the board engaged facial match but not as reliable as biometrics of candidates fingers.
“Examination malpractices is a serious global issues, and as it is in Nigeria today, examination conducting bodies are more exposed to global practices than before ,in 2019 UTME ,Jamb had candidates who registered more than 200times”.Dr Fabian said
He emphasized that Nigeria is standing tall in the conduct of examinations among the nation’s of the world.
According to the Jamb Head Media, “The standard of education has fallen globally and Nigeria remains the only nation in the world that conducts computer-based test exams on a large scale for 1.8million candidates”
He, however, said that the board, in conforming with international best practices, was proactively taking care of people with special needs through ICT capacity building and empowerment.
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