JAMB Registration: Kano Cyber Cafés Record High Patronage

Cyber cafes in Kano are now enjoying a remarkable boom in patronage, as applicants besiege the shops for biometric registration, as directed by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

A survey by The Tide  in Kano on  Wednesday indicated that some of the cyber cafes in the Kano metropolis were unable to cope with the influx of applicants.

Checks around the city revealed that the cyber cafes on Bompai and Hadeja roads could not cope with the large number of applicants who wanted to register for the examination.

Abubakar Sadik, a cyber café operator on Hadeja road, said that he now opened his shop as early as 8 a.m. because of the rising number of customers and closed by 10 p.m.

He said that he now earned an average of N10, 000 to N15, 000 daily because of the biometric registrations, adding that between N750 and N1, 000 was being charged for each registration.

Halilu Musa, another cyber café operator on Bompai road, also said that he grossed between N5,000 and N10, 000 daily because of the newly introduced biometric registration for JAMB candidates.

He said that the cost of the registration was high because of the high price of a thumbprint scanner, adding that the equipment cost about N18, 000.

However, Isa Malik, a candidate who was at a cyber café for the registration, bemoaned the “stressful nature of the biometric registration’’, saying that it took him three days to finish the registration due to some glitches.

“I paid N1, 500 for the registration and the scanner rejected my fingerprints,’’ he added.

Malik appealed to JAMB to change the system because of the untold hardships encountered by applicants during the registration process.