By Mumini AbdulKareem
Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede has said that about 80 per cent of first class graduates of Nigerian universities scored below 200 in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) while seeking admission.
Speaking at his Ilorin residence, weekend, Oloyede said most of the first-class graduates from the nation’s universities were not exceptional but merely scored average marks in their UTME.
“There have been instances where candidates with poorer scores were dropped to less competitive courses but later crossed to the more competitive ones and emerged as the best in those courses during their graduation”, he said.
Oloyede who disclosed that the board generated N12 billion as income in 2017 but remitted N7.8 billion to the Federal Government after deducting its expenses noted that the feat was achieved because of blockage of loopholes and wastages.
He thanked the National Assembly for the role it played in ensuring the commission achieved its objectives and President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the right environment for refund to be possible.
He said although JAMB is not a revenue-generating agency, it is also not a money-wasting establishment.
According to him, 1.7 million candidates sat for the last UTME, in addition to over 200,000 direct candidates, noting that the board expects two million candidates to sit for its 2018 examination.
He said JAMB has devised means to check unscrupulous activities of candidates who do multiple registrations by deliberately writing their names wrongly with the intention to claim the result of the one with the highest score and thereafter demand correction of the name claiming that the fault is not theirs,” he said.
He stated that the cut-off mark that JAMB put at 120 for 2017/2018 admission was a benchmark for admission of candidates and not a score for automatic admission.
“Some affiliated institutions were urging reduction of cut-off marks adopted by their parent universities. The affiliates had approached the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to ask JAMB to prevail on the universities to reduce the cut-off marks.
The affiliates were complaining that they were finding it difficult to get candidates to admit with the cut-off marks.
“Another technological means was devised to check cyber cafe operators from exploiting candidates who register for the UTME in their cafes while the Central Admission Processing System was introduced to ease processes of admission of qualified candidates”, Oloyede concluded.
