Problems of e-PIN will soon be solved, JAMB tells candidates

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said the hitches being experienced with the e-PIN vending sale format will be over in a matter of days.

Isha’q Oloyede, JAMB registrar, gave the assurance on Wednesday during the opening ceremony of a strategic planning retreat on the monitoring, supervision and evaluation of 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

He advised the candidates to remain calm as the board was doing its best to tackle hitches being experienced during the registration.

“Emerging from the retreat at Abeokuta, the Board has innovated a contemporary sale of application method, which has led to the elimination of scratch cards,” he said.

“The Board has adopted a cost saving procedure PIN Vending System. It is a secured system which has redressed the sharp practices associated with the use of scratch cards.

“We are aware of the teething problems attendant to the introduction of the new sale format, and as a responsive body, we have taken steps to ease the challenges and in a few days, the results would be a seamless registration exercise all over the country.”

Speaking in the same vein, JAMB acting zonal coordinator in Nasarawa state, Moses Akobu, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the e-PIN was not introduced to create hardship for candidates.

“In the past, JAMB asked candidates to buy scratch cards from banks and do their registration in the cybercafé of their choice.

“But the board discovered that in the process, candidates encountered problems such as mismatching of names and passports.

“This mismatch often create problem on the day of the examination,’’ Akobu told NAN.

He said some cybercafés often exploit candidates by charging them excessive fees outside the JAMB’s recommended N5,500.

“For example, some cybercafés charge fees ranging between N7,000 and N8000, which is not supposed to be.

“When the new JAMB registrar came on board, he identified these lapses and introduced the e-PIN vending in order to prevent fraud and solve the problem of mismatching.

“The system is good because it is error free and the JAMB will have a direct contact with all prospective candidates through their valid email addresses,” he said.

Akobu said the desire of JAMB is to serve the candidates better and it is ready to do.

“So the hitches they are experiencing now will be over in a matter of few days,” he said.

The zonal coordinator added that the major challenge of generating e-PIN for the candidates being faced by the banks was due to poor network.