JAMB blames NIN as revenue falls to N5.8bn

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board have blamed the introduction of the National Identification Number requirement into the registration process for the drop in revenue are generated from the sale of forms for the 2021 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examinations and the Direct Entry Examinations.

It claimed that the NIN requirement made it impossible for some potential candidates to register, resulting in a decrease in the number of candidates registered and the proceeds received from form sales.

Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the board’s Director of Press and Public Relations, revealed this in a phone discussion with our correspondent on Sunday.

According to the PUNCH, the sale of forms for the 2021 UTME/DE produced N5,887,628,900 for JAMB.

The amount is less than the N6,563,086,710 generated by the board from forms in 2020.

The amount produced from the sale of forms was seen in the board’s weekly newsletters for April and May 2021 under the financial inflow column.

“Last year, we had over two million applicants who registered for the tests, both the UTME and the DE,” Benjamin stated when asked what caused the decline in income generated from the forms. This year, however, we’re talking about 1.3 million to 1.4 million people. We know that things like the addition of the NIN to the registration procedure had a negative impact.

“From the information on ground, the NIN did not make lots of candidates register and you know before now we have been having cases of multiple registrations and that was why we brought in the NIN.”

The registration period for 2021 began on April 10, 2021, and ended on May 29, 2021, though the board had stated that a few candidates with “exceptional conditions” would be granted an extension.

In 2021, a total of 1,338,687 applicants applied for the UTME, with 75,328 applying for the Direct Entry exam.

The estimates are based on a total of over two million candidates who have registered for the 2020 election.