New JAMB Registrar Segun Aina Clears 5,000 Complaints in First 5 Days, Relocates to SERVICOM Desk

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has resolved more than 5,000 pending and previously unresolved complaints within just five days, as newly resumed Registrar, Professor Segun Aina, moved swiftly to strengthen the Board's Service Compact with Nigerians (SERVICOM) unit.

The initiative forms part of Aina's broader effort to guarantee swift and efficient service delivery to the Board's clients, particularly candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions across the country, the examination body disclosed. In a statement issued at the weekend by the Acting Director of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB explained that the initiative aligns with the second of Aina's "Five Enduring Pillars," which centres on the principle of "Service at Heart."

In a notably hands-on approach to tackling the backlog, the Registrar physically relocated his seat to the SERVICOM Unit, allowing him to personally assess the nature of complaints being received and directly oversee efforts to resolve outstanding cases rather than manage the process remotely through subordinates.

Aina also directed SERVICOM desk officers to address complaints holistically and promptly, stressing that the Board owed its clients services commensurate with the fees they had paid. According to the statement, that directive has already begun yielding measurable results, with more than 5,000 pending complaints cleared within the first five days of the new push.

The complaints resolved cut across several categories central to the candidate registration and examination experience. Among them were difficulties encountered by candidates trying to create profile codes after losing access to the phone numbers used during previous registrations, a recurring headache for applicants navigating JAMB's digital registration system. The intervention also addressed biometric verification challenges, including cases identified as genuine biometric failures encountered either during Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) registration or on the day of the examination itself.

Beyond biometric issues, Aina reportedly scrutinised the operations of the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), the platform through which candidates' admission offers are processed and confirmed, identifying and resolving several operational challenges within it. These included cases involving candidates who had lost their phones or SIM cards and were consequently locked out of their accounts, candidates seeking to convert their registration status from Direct Entry (DE) to UTME, as well as instances where graduating students' names had been mistakenly omitted from the National Matriculation List.

Other complaints resolved under the new push involved payment difficulties encountered during the registration process, inappropriate examination venue assignments, e-PIN generation issues, various technical glitches, and challenges candidates faced while attempting to upload required documents to the platform. JAMB also addressed a number of recurring requests bordering on corrections to candidates' personal details, including changes to names, dates of birth, states of origin, and local government areas, issues that have historically generated significant volumes of candidate complaints during each admission cycle.

According to the statement, the Registrar's direct, hands-on involvement in the SERVICOM resolution process was specifically designed to ensure that complaints were not merely logged and left pending, but comprehensively addressed within the shortest possible turnaround time.

JAMB's SERVICOM unit exists as part of a broader federal government framework requiring public agencies to maintain functional service-delivery charters that set out clear standards for how citizens' complaints and service requests should be handled. For an examination body responsible for processing millions of candidates annually, complaint backlogs bordering on registration errors, technical failures, or biometric mismatches can directly affect whether candidates are able to sit for examinations or have their results properly processed, making swift resolution mechanisms particularly consequential for JAMB's client base of prospective university, polytechnic, and college of education entrants.

The swift resolution of the complaint backlog comes as Aina continues to settle into the JAMB leadership, with the early emphasis on direct oversight of frontline service issues seen as an early signal of the operational priorities his administration intends to pursue at the examination body going forward.