The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board on Friday defended the introduction of the use of the National Identity Number for the registration of the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

The board said the move was for security reasons and to checkmate examination malpractice, adding that the directive was from the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu.

The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof Is-haq Oloyede, said this during a virtual meeting with owners of computer-based test centres, service providers and other stakeholders to kick-start the 2021 UTME registration.

He said, “We don’t even require the name of the candidate, we just want the NIN. We will then do the needful to pull the data of the candidate and the process will go on from there.

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“It is for security reasons. For us at our small level, it helps us to avoid impersonation, but there is a bigger picture. There is insecurity in the country and we know that many of these problems are there because we have identification problems. We can’t identify every citizen, where he is and what he is doing.

According to Oloyede, candidates must make use of accessible SIM cards which have never been used for UTME registration.

He said discussions were ongoing with the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, to grant a conditioned waiver to an estimated 20 per cent of candidates without SIM cards.