Unverified biometric registration: JAMB to clear results on Friday

Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has said it would by Friday (today) resolve the problems of candidates who could not access their results due to ‘unverified biometric registration’ challenge.

This came amidst protests by some candidates who alleged that JAMB’s refusal to release their UTME result, because their biometric registration could not be verified, was capable of truncating their academic career.

The candidates argued they should not be punished for the problem of unverified biometric registration because it was not their fault.

Some of the candidates told our correspondents that they were subjected to the biometric test before they were allowed to enter the examination hall while some said that supervisors in their centres allowed them to write the UTME when it became obvious that the machines were malfunctioning.

One of them, Ogungbile Gbolabo, said supervisors at the Kosofe Junior College, Ketu, Lagos, where he sat for the examination, actually ensured that all the candidates were subjected to the biometric test before they were allowed to be part of the exam.

But he did not know whether the machine was malfunctioning or not.

“I was surprised when I went to check my result online and the reply I got was ‘biometric registration not verified’. I did the biometric test before I was allowed into the exam hall. I was on seat number 313. The candidate that was to be on seat number 312 did not come for the exam and nobody cheated there, so there is no reason for holding on to my result. Please, help us appeal to JAMB to release the result,” the 18-year-old boy who aspires to read Law at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Osun State, said.

However,  Ifurueze Amarachi, who wrote the UTME at Alvana Model School, Owerri, Imo State, said that the supervisor resorted to the use of e-slip to identify candidates when the biometric machine developed fault.

Independent findings revealed that some supervisors had written to the board to exonerate the candidates. Some of the supervisors complained that the machine did not work efficiently while others complained of low battery.

In an interview with one of our correspondents on Wednesday, the JAMB’s Director of Test Administration, Dr. Yusuf Lawal, said the board did everything to ensure that the biometric registration was successful.

He said, “We assume some of these candidates were not at fault because we have reports that some of the supervisors did not accord the biometric date verification the right attention. We are looking at the issues generally; certainly we will ensure no candidate is treated unfairly because we will ensure justice. We are also parents, we will err on the side of the candidates, but for now, we are processing all the complaints at management level, and we will evaluate them and respond accordingly.”

Lawal, confirmed that there were complaints about candidates not being able to do the biometric data verification before the examination commenced due to logistics problems at the centres.

He, however, explained that the case was different from those that their results were withheld for examination malpractice.

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