Thousands of candidates may be disqualified from taking this year’s Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exams due to errors in their NIN/Profile code, according to the Kaduna State Chapter of the country’s largest students union, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).

In a statement, Huzaifa Bello, the Chairman of the NANS in Kaduna State, disagreed with the JAMB on the reasons given, and called for a reasonable extension of electronic registration rather than students risking their lives by traveling to JAMB headquarters in their respective states capitals for manual registration.

JAMB, he claims, has barred hundreds of students from registering online for this year’s exams since they were unable to receive profile codes before May 27. As a result, we’ve received a barrage of calls and letters from kids, parents, and other concerned individuals expressing their unhappiness and resentment with the Board’s decision.

“Obtaining a profile code is mandatory for all prospective JAMB candidates. This year’s procedure has been plagued with numerous challenges due to the requirement that candidates have to link their phone numbers with their National Identity Number (NIN).

“These challenges have already caused a shift in the closing date for registration from May 15 to May 29 and a shift in the examination dates as well. But even with the latest two weeks extension granted by JAMB yesterday (Monday), thousands of candidates are still out there without the mandatory profile code.

“From available statistics the board has only registered about 1.3 million candidates as compared to over two million it did last year and this figure represents the lowest turnout for the exams in decades

“The low enrollment figures are directly attributed to the NIN requirement and the difficulty in obtaining the “almighty” profile code which cost N50 per trial and could cost a candidate a couple of hundreds or some thousands of Naira before receiving the codes on their mobile phones,” he said.

Bello argued that, “If the candidates could not obtain profile codes due to hitches on JAMB’s servers, within the previous two weeks extension, we feel the new two weeks extension is too short a period to address the hitches. We therefore call on the Examination body to further extend the closing date for another two weeks, making one month to allow all intending candidates register.”

Source: The Nations