Two
weeks after the commencement of registration for the Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination (UTME), applicants are expressing frustrations with
the process, Daily Trust reports.
Over
1.5 million secondary school students are expected to register for the
examination.
However,
halfway into the one month period allowed for the exercise only 600,000 have so
far been able to register, JAMB, the body responsible for university admission
said yesterday.
Among
the recurring challenges faced by students are fewer registration centres,
laborious process in bank payments and internet failures.
Two
female candidates waiting to register for the JAMB examination slumped at the
entrance of the Niger state zonal office, Minna, yesterday, Daily Trust learnt.
The
candidates whose name could not be immediately ascertained were said to have
slumped during a stampede, while struggling to obtained registration forms
handed through iron barricade by officials of the board.
Three
candidates who witnessed the development confirmed the situation in separate
interviews with our correspondent at the gate, while waiting to be registered.
“We
have to struggle to revive them by emptying content of table water on them,”
one the witnesses explained.
Two
male candidates also were also said to have engaged each other in fisticuffs,
our correspondent learnt.
Many
candidates were struggling to obtain registration forms at the gate at about 4
pm when Daily Trust visited the board.
Some
of them who spoke to our correspondent complained that the registration process
was too cumbersome and strenuous. One of the candidates Sagir Sale said he had
been trying to complete the registration in vain since last Wednesday.
In
Katsina, students go through rigorous experiences with some sleeping for three
days at banks to before they get the chance to make payment.
A
student, Salisu Sani, said it took him a week to be able to get registered. He
said tempers were so high that trouble erupted in one of the banks.
I
travelled 40km daily from Mani LGA to Katsina to get access to financial
institution to be able to make payments, he added.
I
can confirmed to you some of my friends that we met at the queue were passing
the night with gate man for three days for he could not travel daily having come
from a remote village in Dankama, he said
Candidates
in Kaduna have called on JAMB to extend the one month period saying the
processes are cumbersome and time consuming.
Faith
Takai said she paid for PIN twice because the first one she bought was invalid.
Another
candidate who gave her name as Racheal said that she started her registration a
week ago, yet her thumb print has not been captured.
Also,
Mohammed Yusuf said he left home early in the morning to the CBT centre in JAMB
office; he could not achieve anything because of the crowd.
In
Kano, some of the candidates who spoke to our reporters at Amnet Institute of
Technology blamed the difficulties in the registration process to poor network
and inadequate manpower at the fewer available registration centres.
Buhari
Sani, one of the prospective candidates for the university entrance examination
from Yobe state, told our reporters that he has been in Kano for three days but
yet to finish the registration process.
Responding,
the administrative officer of Over One Consult and Investment Limited, Malam
Habib Shehu said the registration this time around is more cumbersome, “First
we have to create an e-mail for the person, create his profile, generate the
pin then register him.”
He
added that even with that sometimes the problem is not from them but from the
JAMB office.
In
Akwa Ibom State, our correspondent reports that the story is the same with that
of other parts of the country.
In
Borno State, our correspondent reports
that candidates decried discrimination between children of poor parentage, who
formed the majority, and those of the rich.
A
female candidate, who simply identified herself as Fatima , said: “For about
two weeks now, I leave home every day without taking breakfast, remain
throughout the afternoon without lunch and return starving”.
In
Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Fatima Ismail Ville from Great
Heights Academy, said her school first came on Friday around 7am and stayed
till 9 pm but was told to come back on Monday.
“We
came today after writing our exams by 12pm and we were allowed in with Nigerian
Turkish School, though there were many people outside but we entered,” she
said.
She
said they were given preference because they came as a school and that 10
people were allowed in at once for the registration, with two people attending
to them.
For
Hafsat Uthman, the process is challenging because of the large numbers of
candidates registering.
Daily
Trust correspondent who monitored developments at the designated JAMB
registration centres in Lagos reported how many applicants were expressing
frustrations with what they alleged to be slow-pace internet server.
The
examination body has 60 designated registration centres in Lagos.
Applicants
who came early were assigned numbers and at intervals, one of the security
guards will come to call in about 10 to 15 applicants who will go in to do the
registration.
“I
came to this centre as early as 9am and I was assigned 114 Number as I was 114
on the register being used. But this is 2:30pm and I have not been called in.
The last time the gatekeeper came out to call applicants was after 12 and since
then the 10 to 15 people who went with him have not all return because the internet server, we were told was slow.
Now, chances are that I may not be registered today because I overheard the
gatekeeper telling some other people that it was advisable for them to come
very early tomorrow,” Jide Quaseem, a17-year old applicant said.
Another
applicant who simply identified herself as Bimpe Kujore also express regret on
the delay, wondering if the JAMB registration operators were not aware of the
scorching sun under which they were forced to wait.
In
Jos, the Plateau State capital, the premises of most commercial banks are
overcrowded by prospective candidates as early as 8 am.
Ibrahim
Danjuma who wrote the exam in 2016 but did not obtain admission told our
correspondent that “last year the stress
was in the exam process not the registration process, because it was computer
based.”
In
Port Harcourt, Rivers State, some applicants
said the process of getting the pin is too cumbersome and called on JAMB
to engage more banks in the exercise as to make the process easy.
In
Enugu State, an official at the JAMB office who identified himself simply as Mr
Andy admitted that lack of access to candidate’s pin numbers and general
network failure are the main difficulties facing the candidates registering for
JAMB in the state.
A
student, Jonah Jeh, said he spent two weeks before completing the process
yesterday.
Nancy
Washima, who spoke to our reporter at a business centre expressed her
disappointment saying that the new system introduced by JAMB has brought untold
hardship to the candidates.
Washima
who said that it is the third time she was registering for JAMB as she was a
candidate in 2015 and 2016 said that the previous process when candidates buy a
scratch card which is used to access JAMB’s portal and register at designated
centres is much easier.
Charity
Abraham, Zulaihat Abdullahi and Aisha Hassan also have the same story of
disappointment with the process.
Charity
said:”I have been here since morning and I have not eaten since then. I paid
N600 at the Business centre to open an email, create a profile and obtain a
printout of the profile. I paid N5, 500 in the Bank and I am going to the JAMB
office to pay N700.”
JAMB
reacts
JAMB
Registrar Professor Is-haq Oloyede said most of the problems associated with
the UTME registration process were self-imposed.
He
said “I visited Lagos and Ogun and I am now in Kaduna (yesterday). What we
discovered is that most of the difficulties were self-imposed. Number one;
there was under utilization of capacity by the by the CBT centres.”
He
said all the registered centres had about 100 computers each and could register
a hundred candidates simultaneously but instead, resorted to using “one or two
computers.”
He
said the delay in assigning registration pins to candidates by banks was due to
failure to follow instructions. He said banks were instructed to create
profiles for the candidates but “rather than creating the profiles, they are
conniving with some centres and sending candidates to them.”
He
said some banks haven’t deployed enough manpower for the exercise.
Professor
Oloyede said there were 650 CBT centres in the country which were enough to
carry out the registration exercise but nearly all candidates “insist on going
to JAMB centres which were only 36 in number.”
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