The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof Is’aq Oloyede, has said 600,000 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination applicants are unable to register for the exam due to inability to obtain their National Identification Numbers.

Oloyede said the board would on Saturday (today) decide if there was the need to extend the registration period and change the exam date due to the challenge.

Oloyede said this on Friday at a Zoom meeting titled, ‘Briefing session for the committees on 2021 UTME.’ The exam had been slated to hold between June 5 and 19.

The JAMB boss, however, said the mock examination would begin on May 20 as stipulated earlier.

He said, “Presently, we have 1.2 million candidates that have registered, but we expect 1.9 million. 600,000 candidates had made attempts to register, but because of NIN, they could not.

“We want to do an appraisal of all the issues to know if we are extending registration or not. If we find out that we can give 80 per cent of those who have made attempts other passwords, then there will be no need to extend registration.

“We have to determine where the problem is coming from before we can say we are extending. After today, we will address the press tomorrow (Saturday) on the outcome of the meeting on the main examination dates and registration. We want to assess what is happening.”

Meanwhile, some UTME applicants have lamented over the challenge of getting their NINs, which is one of the requirements for registration.

The NIMC spokesperson, Mr Kayode Adegoke, promised to get back to Saturday PUNCH for a reaction. But he didn’t do as of the time of filing this report.