UTME 2022: JAMB warns against bulk registration

Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has warned school proprietors against bulk registration of candidates for the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

JAMB accused the schools of collecting exorbitant amounts of money for candidates’ registration for the UTME, urging to desist from such act to avoid unnecessary sanctions from JAMB.

It maintained that it does not accept bulk registration as other examination bodies, notably, NABTEB, NECO or WAEC do, meaning that JAMB only deals directly with individual candidates.

JAMB, in its weekly bulletin released on Monday, said It has discovered that most of the problems encountered by a category of candidates, including some products of elitist secondary schools, are traceable to group registration adopted, which invariably leads to a mismatch of candidates data.

It, thus, advised parents to allow their children/wards to personally participate in the registration process for its UTME in order to enable them have hands-on knowledge of the process, and also enabled them avoid mistakes that could ruin their chances of participating in the UTME exercise.

JAMB added that the registration experience itself, which involves the use of computer proves helpful especially to technophobic candidates in the actual examination as it is computer-based.

It maintained that the unwarranted involvement of parents deprive candidates the opportunity to experience a novel terrain and the consequent satisfaction they might derive from being totally independent to explore their own ingenuity, adding that most of the intrusive parents, guardians and school proprietors complicate issues for the candidates.

JAMB said it has also noticed that some parents unduly hasten the enrolments of their underage wards into tertiary institutions by cajoling them to sit the UTME when they are not mentally and physically prepared for such.

“These candidates are not yet ready at that impressionable age to handle the environmental influences of tertiary

institutions, peer pressures and the rigours of tertiary education. It should be noted that, generally, age 17 or 18 is the appropriate entry age into tertiary institutions.

“While age 16 is only being tolerated, anything earlier is inimical to the overall developmental interest of the candidates, hence, we are charging parents to desist from incessant interfering in the candidates’ choices of tertiary institutions.”

Meanwhile, JAMB advised against the use of postpaid lines or special bundle package to register for the UTME, stating that such packages has the potential to hinder the delivery of profile codes expected to be delivered to the candidates’ registered SIMs.

“Consequently, such requests to get profile codes using a SIM on a postpaid plan or any special package would only result in receiving error responses like ‘insufficient credit’, etc because, in the real sense, no money is on the SIM.”

The Board, therefore, urged parents, guardians and school proprietors to allow candidates handle the registration procedures by themselves and provisioning their wards’ phones with a minimum of N50 direct airtime.