Fresh reports say the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has concluded to redistribute candidates with lower cut-off marks than what their first choice institutions required.The examination body has now urged candidates and parents to check the board’s website from Friday, for their names and institutions.
This is coming on the heels of confusion that trailed the new decision by the body to reduce the cut-off to 180 for university admission and the subsequent protest by parents of students at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) over the institution’s high cut-off marks.
According to The nation, the board revealed that the policy was meant to ensure that every candidate with a reasonable score of 180 and above was placed somewhere in an institution.
In a statement issued in Abuja by the body’s head of media, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, JAMB reiterated that the national cut-off marks of 180 for universities and 150 for polytechnics, colleges of education and innovative enterprise institutions in the 2015 UTME were benchmarks to set the tone for this year’s admission exercise.
It also added that the decision to have nationally-accepted cut-off marks was to serve as a guide and pruning mechanism to give the tertiary institutions qualitative and manageable candidates to choose from a pool of candidates desirous of tertiary education.
“However, universities and other levels of tertiary institutions are at liberty to go higher. But not lower, depending on their peculiarities and the performance of candidates that choose them. Universities are centres of excellence anywhere in the world and ours should not be an exception. The policy witnessed in University of Lagos (250 cut off mark) is aimed at ensuring that our universities admit only the top best as done globally.
“JAMB is working round the clock to ensure that Nigerian universities are among the best in Africa and perhaps the world in the next ranking and to also utilise the available spaces and admit more candidates bearing in mind the admission criteria of various needy institution.
“The board wishes to state that no candidate would be denied any right to aspire to tertiary education, even as it is aware that some universities have their own admission cut-off marks acceptable by the board for courses they offered. Please be informed that the board ensures that these institutions apply this cut off marks uniformly across all candidates without discrimination.
“The decision of the Board on the print-out for this year exercise was done in good faith not to jeopardise the right of candidates due to individual cut-off set by some Nigerian tertiary institution. Those candidates who do not meet the cut-off marks of such institutions will be placed in needy institutions within their geopolitical zone depending on available space in such institutions.
“The board’s aim is to accommodate as many candidates as possible instead of just pushing them to schools we know ab initio doesn’t have the carrying capacity to admit all.
“For instance, University of Lagos with a carrying capacity of about 9,000, has over 60,000 applying. The question is what happens to the over 50,000? We have other institutions like that and what we are doing is to ensure that the balance are also place in other needy institutions,” the statement read in part.
Recall that some prospective students of UNILAG also took the institution to court over the irregularities stemming from the reduced cut-off marks and their inflation of the digits.
