Standup9ja: UTME applicants suffer slow registration process
Most problems self-imposed, JAMB says
Two weeks after the commencement of registration for the
Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), applicants are expressing
frustrations with the process Standup9ja 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, Standup9ja 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 Standup9ja 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.
Standup9ja 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.”
Contributions by Misbahu Bashir & Chidimma C. Okeke
(Abuja) Ahmed Tahir Ajobe, (Minna) Uthman Abubakar (Maiduguri) Habibu Umar
Aminu, (Katsina) Christiana T. Alabi, (Kaduna) Halima Musa and Richard P
Ngbokai (Kano) Dickson S. Adama (Uyo) Nurudeen Oyewole (Lagos) Lami Sadiq (Jos
) Victor Edozie (Port Harcourt) Tony Adibe (Enugu) Kabiru R. Anwar (Yola)
Balarabe Alkassim (Bauchi)
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