An aggrieved widow, Dr Jane Uche, has appealed to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to help resolve the problem of SIM loss hindering the registration of her children’s UTME.
Uche, made the appeal in a phone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Monday.
While narrating her ordeal, urged JAMB to make provision for children of the deads , whose numbers were used to generate profile code.
The widow explained that her late husband used his line to generate profile code for his two children in the past UTME registration but unfortunately couldn’t trace the line when the man passed on.
”I have three children, of age 20, 18 and 16, none of them had gained admission to any higher institution before their father passed.
”The mates of the one who is 20 years old have almost graduated but mine is still at home, the griefs keep multiplying due to recycle challenges,” she said.
According to her, this is a special appeal to JAMB to please make provision for children of the dead to be able to carry on with their registration.
“My husband left home this faithful day not sick but I was called in the evening to come and pick up his corpse in front of LASUTH Mortuary and there we could not retrieve his SIM cards.
“The owner of the SIM card used to generate profile code then is dead. Now, with JAMB, you can only use one SIM card to continue to send codes to write JAMB again.
“What this means is that my children cannot write JAMB again unless they retrieve their late father’s SIM card and this is impossible for us to get.
“With this development, the education of my children will be on hold because to get admission, they must be able to write JAMB,” she said.
She explained that a lot of candidates were facing similar situation, appealing to the authority to enable the system retrieve SIM through SIM swap, lost SIM, and change of SIM.
“I’ve tried everything possible by going to all JAMB offices to see if they can get answer for me. But so far, they said there is no provision for SIM swap,” she added.
JAMB’s Spokesperson, Dr Fabian Benjamin, told NAN that the woman’s situation was pathetic as there was nothing the board could do except she retrieves the SIM from the network provider.
Benjamin explained that the Board had briefed the public on several occasions on the danger of losing SIM card, noting that
SIM SWAP option was still not available.
The board’s official X (formerly Twitter) handle says a feature is now available at all Computer-Based Centre (CBT) to address SIM loss but the SIM SWAP feature is still not available.
The post reads, “Good news for those who cannot retrieve their previously used but lost SIM cards. A feature is now available at all CBT centres to address your case.
” Kindly fill the template to access this service for the coming UTME/DE registration. Note that SIM SWAP is still not available”.
Another information on official X reads:”Important message on SIM SWAP.
” It’s important to clarify that while this new feature addresses the issue of lost SIM cards, the SIM SWAP service, which would allow for the replacement of a SIM card with a new one for JAMB registration, is still not available.
“The SIM card remains a unique identifier that cannot be replaced through this method.
“This development is a step by JAMB to streamline the registration process, ensuring that candidates are not disadvantaged due to technical issues with their SIM cards”.
