The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) may conduct a second 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination because of NIN challenges faced by some candidates.

The JAMB Registrar Is-haq Oloyede disclosed this on Wednesday in Lagos while monitoring the profiling of candidates with 2021 UTME registration challenges.

“So far, we have just 17, 758 candidates with challenges that had been profiled, nationwide.

“At the end of the entire exercise, we may have to conduct another examination for those with genuine cases after the main UTME slated for June 19 to July 3,” said Mr Oloyede.

He reiterated JAMB’s commitment to ensuring that Nigerian students desirous of tertiary education would be given an equal opportunity.

“We keep hearing flimsy excuses such as my lesson teacher used his phone to generate the profile code, our tutorial centre helped us to register, and I was not in town.

“Other reasons advanced are: I used my mother’s NIN to generate my profile code, my mummy did the registration for me,” he said.

According to the registrar, some candidates said they did not have money to procure the UTME form.

“We have also seen cases where rather than send their NIN to 55019, candidates sent it to 55012, while others sent the same command with post-paid phones rather than pre-paid,” he explained.

Over 500,000 candidates had claimed they were unable to register for the examination before May 15. JAMB later extended the registration to May 29.

The candidates claimed they could not generate a profile code and obtain the National Identification Number (NIN).

The board had insisted that no candidate would be allowed to sit the examination without the NIN.

Following the challenges, the board allowed a two-week window for the affected people to lodge their complaints at its offices or registration centres and get help.

Mr Oloyede called on state ministries of education to regulate activities of tutorial centres as a strategy to save the education sector from collapse.

Mr Oloyede said the activities of some tutorial centres remained a hindrance to sanitising the country’s education system.

According to him, tutorial centres are a haven for examination malpractice.