Only 30% of UTME candidates to secure varsity admission, says NUC

The National Universities Commission (NUC) says 30 per cent of the 1.7 million candidates who wrote the Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME) will be admitted this year.

The Executive Secretary, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at a one-day public hearing on the regulatory conflict between the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) and universities in the country.

At the event which was organised by the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, the NUC boss said the limited spaces in tertiary institutions had made admission crisis inevitable nationwide.

His words: “The crisis of admission in this country is inevitable. Unless we expand spaces, we shall continue to have this problem.

“Every examination has its own problem. We believe JAMB exam is credible and all of us operating in the system respect the results.”

JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, dismissed any existing rift between the board and universities.

He noted that most of the candidates who sit for its examinations yearly do not possess the requisite qualifications for admission.

The JAMB chief executive said: “It is not true that we have 1.7 million candidates that are ready to go into the Nigerian university system. Of the 1.7 million that took the exams, I can say conveniently that not more than 30 per cent of them are prepared for admission. They are just trying. They do not have the five O’ level required to go into the university.

“Second, let also realise that 10 per cent of the 1.7 million that we see or 1.9 as the case may be are not what can be categorised as belonging to the net enrolment ratio for entering tertiary education. They belong to the gross enrolment ratio.

“Eighty per cent of candidates do not have the O’ level at all. They are awaiting results. So when we are building our theories and analysis, we need to be very cautious.

“If you score 400 or above and you do not have the five O’ level credit, you cannot come into the university.”