How my disability denied me UTME registration

The aspiration of an 18-year-old Ogun State teenager, Esther Abiona of becoming a medical laboratory scientist in one of the country’s top-tier hospitals may be a pipe dream because she has been unable to successfully register for the United Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as a result of having incomplete fingers for biometrics.

According to the Head of Public Affairs and Protocol at the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board, Dr Fabian Benjamin, registration for the 2023 cycle of the examinations, which began on Saturday, 14 January, ended on Tuesday, 14 February.

He said that the Computer-Based Testing (CBT) UTME would be conducted between Saturday, 29 April and Monday, 12 May.

A day before the initial registration deadline, it was extended by one week (15 to 22 February).

By the extension, the sale of e-PINs ended on Monday, 20 February.

At the close of the sale of e-PINs, over N1.5 million candidates had successfully registered for the exercise, inclusive of the 168,748, who indicated to take the mock exam.

Esther said that she registered and sat the 2022 UTME. She applied to study Medical Laboratory Science at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, but was not offered admission despite hitting the cut-off mark.

The teenager said the university’s admission officer told her to register for a supplementary admission in another department in the Faculty of Sciences, which she did. However, she said she was not offered admission.

The young admission seeker therefore decided to apply for the 2023 UTME when she learnt that registration had begun.

She recalled that the registration was a herculean task owing to some technical difficulties she encountered due to her disability, which robbed her of all the fingers on her right hand.

On 14 February, Esther said she left her home in the Magboro area of Ogun State and went to a registration centre at the Redemption Camp, Mowe, where she was told to pay N3,500 to generate a UTME e-pin, N1,000 for the compulsory reading texts for the examinations, and N700 for the registration of the JAMB CBT centre.

The total payment of N5,200 would be paid electronically to JAMB.

After the generation of the PIN, she was told to do the biometric registration, which required that she used her 10 fingers. That was where the problem began.

“The lady at the camp, who told me her name was Joy, said she would not be able to register me following JAMB’s new directive for persons with disabilities. She stressed that JAMB warned them to refer anyone with such cases to their headquarters in Abeokuta for registration”, Esther said in a tired tone.

Esther had lost her five fingers having suffered a severe condition that led to her almost losing the arm.

The registration officer had also insisted that she visit the Abeokuta office of the board to get registered.

Esther returned home and told her mother, who gave her N5,000 the next day to visit Abeokuta for the registration.

At the Abeokuta office, the story was the same. Since she had already generated an e-PIN at the Redemption Camp, the officers reportedly tried to register her but insisted that her case was ‘severe’.

She said they urged her to visit the JAMB Headquarters, Abuja, for her registration as there was nothing they could do.

“They tried to do the biometric, but the system kept rejecting the registration, stressing that I needed to capture my 10 fingers.

“One of the officers even told me that she would advise me not to waste my time to go to Abuja because they may also not be able to do it since the registration would close in a week’s time”, Esther added.

Disappointed, Esther said she began to cry, begging the JAMB officials to try to do something but they said it was a new policy by JAMB that persons with disabilities would have to go to Abuja to register.

“That is absurd. If they wanted me to go to Abuja, they shouldn’t have taken the N5,700 I paid through their server. They shouldn’t have generated an e-PIN for me. They shouldn’t have captured me. Now, they have dashed my hopes. The registration has closed and I have been denied the opportunity to register for the examination simply because I have five fingers. How fare is that?” she asked in a tear-laden tone.

Providing evidence, Esther sent her payment receipt showing a text message sent on 15 February — a week before the registration deadline — by JAMB to her, confirming her payment and providing her with e-PIN.

A follow-up text was sent to clarify her registration status at 1.07 pm on February 21 – a day before the deadline.

Esther’s mother, Folashade, begged JAMB to help her sort the issue out as she could not afford to send her daughter to Abuja for her biometric.

Six years ago, Esther, who then lived with her parents in Sango, Ogun State, said she just came back from school and felt a sharp pain in her hand.

JAMB spokesperson, Benjamin said Esther might have registered after the deadline. He said: “It is not true. Our system caters to all these issues. Where there is a challenge in capturing all 10 fingers, the officers are meant to capture the fingers that are available.

“At the registration template, there is provision for you to make a report, noting that there is a challenge capturing the fingers so that JAMB will know”.

He added that the essence of biometric registration was to ensure that no one impersonated another person in the examination hall.

“The officers are to capture the fingers available and make the report. The registration will go through. At the point of examination, the report, which is already written against her name, will be used to screen her. I doubt if any registration officer will be ignorant of that fact.

“When people have problems like this, instead of them to say the truth, they will be lying. Let her state the challenge. She wants to register and she was late. That is her problem. There is no way she would say she came to Abeokuta. Who attended to her?

“This is something that we have trained people for. How can a system that has made provisions for these people now become faulty because of her? Why did she wait for this long before coming to PUNCH to complain? It (what she is saying) is not true”, he said.

Asked what other option Esther had, Benjamin simply said: “There is no advice I can give again. The registration has closed”.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CDD), Mr David Anyaele said that the action by the JAMB officers was discriminatory.

He urged the lady to write a petition to JAMB and the CDD and the matter would be taken up.

“This is a violation of Section 1 of the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities Act, which provides that no citizen of this country shall be discriminated against on the grounds of disabilities.

“The lady needs to write a petition to JAMB, demanding that she is registered with immediate effect. Any system, technology, or procedure that is designed to deliberately discriminate persons with disabilities, consciously or unconsciously is against the law”, he said.

Credit: Saturday PUNCH