Nigeria’s burgeoning army of admission seekers is subjected to gnashing of teeth each year, with the authorities offering all shades of excuses for this menace, which stakeholders blame on inadequate infrastructure, staff shortages, and intense competition for professional courses, OWEDE AGBAJILEKE reports.

Nigerians’ growing appetite for tertiary education is increasingly colliding with limited admission spaces, leaving more than 5.5 million candidates unable to secure admission despite writing the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) over the last five admission cycles.

The figures point to a widening gap between rising demand for higher education and limited carrying capacity.

Indeed, an analysis of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) admission data from 2021 to 2025 showed that while 8,752,808 candidates sat the UTME, only 3,188,599 eventually secured admission into universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions

This translates to an overall admission rate of 36.4 per cent, meaning that nearly two out of every three candidates failed to gain admission.

The figures reveal a widening gap between the soaring demand for higher education and the country’s capacity to absorb qualified applicants.

For instance, in 2021, about 1.4 million candidates wrote the UTME, but only 312,667 were admitted, representing the lowest admission rate in the five-year period at 22.3 per cent.

Admissions improved in subsequent years, with 557,625 candidates admitted in 2022 out of 1.8 million applicants (31 per cent); 639,263 admitted in 2023 out of 1.64 million applicants (39.1 per cent); and an estimated 670,000 admitted in 2024 out of 1.91 million applicants (35.1 per cent).

The highest admission rate came in 2025 when 1,009,044 of the 2,007,312 UTME candidates secured admission, pushing the success rate to 50.3 per cent. Despite the improvement, almost one million candidates still missed admission that year alone.

The trend underscores an enduring admission crisis, with millions of young Nigerians repeatedly sitting the UTME in pursuit of limited spaces in tertiary institutions.

The surge in applications reflects the increasing premium placed on university and tertiary education as a pathway to employment, social mobility and economic security.

However, the expansion in the number of candidates has not been matched by a corresponding increase in admission capacity.Education stakeholders have attributed the admission bottleneck to inadequate carrying capacity in public institutions, limited infrastructure, a shortage of academic staff, and the intense competition for professional courses such as medicine, law, pharmacy, nursing, and engineering.

The figures also suggest that while the Federal Government has approved more universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in recent years, demand continues to outpace available spaces, forcing many candidates to rewrite the UTME several times before eventually securing admission or abandoning the pursuit altogether.

Findings showed that despite having Africa’s largest university system, with more than 300 licensed universities, Nigeria is among the few countries on the continent that still operate a centralised national university entrance examination.

Under the current admission process, candidates seeking admission into universities and polytechnics are required to sit the UTME conducted by JAMB before proceeding to institution-specific screening. They must also undergo the Post-UTME exercise, introduced in 2005, which is administered independently by individual tertiary institutions as an additional stage of the admission process.

This model is relatively uncommon across Africa, where admission is generally based on secondary school-leaving examination results rather than a separate national entrance test.

Investigations revealed that most African countries do not operate a UTME-style national qualifying examination. In Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Rwanda, universities admit students primarily on the strength of their secondary school certificate results, with additional aptitude tests or interviews reserved for only a few competitive programmes such as medicine, engineering or law.

The pattern is similar across much of the world. Countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and France do not have a single nationwide university entrance examination comparable to Nigeria’s UTME, relying instead on high school qualifications, institutional requirements, and, in some cases, optional standardised tests.

It was also gathered that besides Nigeria, similar systems exist in countries such as China, which conducts the highly competitive Gaokao; South Korea, with its College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT); Turkey, through the YKS; Iran, with the Konkur; Indonesia, through the SNBT/UTBK; Japan, with the Common Test for University Admissions, and Brazil, through the ENEM.  India also operates several national-level entrance examinations, including the Common University Entrance Test (CUET).

The growing admission gap has also raised concerns over how the country can address the carrying-capacity constraints that continue to leave millions of qualified candidates without admission each year. For many of those shut out of tertiary institutions, the problem is not necessarily a lack of academic qualification, but the limited number of available spaces in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

Stakeholders are therefore called upon to invest more in infrastructure, facilities, and manpower to expand the capacity of tertiary institutions and accommodate the rising number of candidates seeking admission.

Beyond expanding carrying capacity, attention is also being drawn to the fate of candidates who are denied admission and must wait another year before reapplying. With the waiting period potentially affecting the academic momentum of young people, concerns have been raised about how to make the year productive rather than allowing affected candidates to remain idle.

This is why some stakeholders believe such candidates could use the period to acquire vocational, digital and entrepreneurial skills, undertake professional certifications or participate in structured preparatory programmes that would improve their employability and academic readiness.

This, they argue, would ensure that candidates caught in the admissions squeeze do not lose an entire year but instead emerge from the waiting period with additional skills and competencies as they seek admission in the following cycle.

However, one of those who strongly opposes calls for the abolition of UTME is the former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Peter Okebukola, who argues that the examination remains a vital instrument for ensuring merit, fairness and quality in Nigeria’s tertiary education admission process.

Drawing on over four decades of first-hand involvement in the administration and evolution of the examination, Prof. Okebukola maintained that the real challenge facing university admissions is not the existence of the UTME, but the widening gap between the number of applicants seeking admission and the available spaces in the nation’s tertiary institutions.

Describing the UTME as an indispensable national assessment tool, he declared: “The UTME is not the disease; it is the thermometer measuring the fever in Nigeria’s higher education system.”

To reinforce his position, the renowned education expert outlined 10 compelling reasons why the examination should be retained, contending that it continues to provide a transparent, standardised and equitable platform for selecting candidates from Nigeria’s vast and highly competitive applicant pool.

“I have been associated with the administration of the University Matriculation Examination (UME), now the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), since 1984 as a senior lecturer and Director at Lagos State University. My perspective is therefore informed not only by research, but by over four decades of watching the examination evolve, absorb criticism and reform itself. That history shapes my answer,” he said.

According to him, the fact that more than 5.5 million candidates were unable to secure admission during the last five admission cycles should not be interpreted as proof that the UTME has failed or should be scrapped.

Rather, he said, the statistics expose the chronic shortage of admission spaces across Nigeria’s universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions, despite the growing number of qualified applicants seeking higher education each year.

Okebukola also dismissed suggestions that Nigeria should abandon the UTME simply because some African countries admit students based primarily on their secondary school examination results, arguing that such comparisons ignore significant differences in population size and admission pressure.

He noted that several of the world’s largest and most competitive higher education systems continue to rely on national entrance examinations similar to the UTME.

“Nigeria’s circumstances more closely resemble those of these large educational systems than those of countries with significantly smaller candidate populations,” he said, arguing that “standardised national examinations remain essential for ensuring merit, fairness and transparency in admissions where demand far exceeds available spaces,” the former NUC boss stated.

Also speaking with The Guardian, an educational consultant and managerial psychologist, Bode Eniaiyejuni, said the carrying-capacity crisis could best be addressed through aggressive investment in critical infrastructure in public tertiary institutions, noting that such infrastructure should extend beyond physical buildings to include digital facilities that would enable institutions to compete in the digital space.

The Akure-based education expert also called for corresponding expansion of personnel to match any increase in physical capacity, while urging the government to broaden hybrid and open distance learning models that allow universities to enrol students beyond the traditional four walls of the classroom.

“The one-year admission wait should become a year of skills acquisition, not idleness,” he said, urging affected candidates to acquire relevant skills in technology and other high-demand areas that could add value to their academic and professional prospects.

He added that such candidates could also consider direct-entry foundation programmes, including the Joint Universities Preliminary Examinations Board (JUPEB) and Interim Joint Matriculation Board (IJMB), which could provide alternative pathways into higher education and, in effect, enable them to bypass another cycle of waiting for admission through the conventional UTME route.

Also weighing in, the Initiator of the Creative Change Centre, Omole Ibukun, said the country cannot continue to allow its youth population to grow rapidly while tertiary education capacity remains limited, warning that young people should not be blamed for failing to secure admission when the problem is largely structural.

He said the government needed to massively expand public universities and other tertiary institutions, invest in lecturers and infrastructure, and simultaneously strengthen polytechnics, technical colleges, vocational education, and other credible alternative pathways.

“We cannot keep tertiary capacity low and blame young people for failing to secure admission,” he said, stressing that although not every young person must immediately enter a conventional university, every qualified candidate should have access to a meaningful pathway to higher learning and relevant skills development.

For candidates who miss admission simply because there is insufficient infrastructure, Ibukun proposed a publicly supported National Transition Year, during which affected candidates could undertake accredited vocational and technical training, digital skills programmes, apprenticeships, internships, community development, foundational university courses and other structured learning programmes.

He suggested that such programmes could carry recognised credits that would count towards candidates’ eventual education, but cautioned that skills acquisition must not be used as an excuse to deny young Nigerians access to university education.

“The long-term solution is still to expand carrying capacity itself,” he added.

Also, in his intervention, the Public Relations Officer, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), David Obidah, argued that the solution to Nigeria’s admission crisis lies in reforming and strengthening institutions alongside expanding the country’s tertiary education system.

Obidah also called for a more strategic admissions framework that would reduce the overwhelming pressure on universities while encouraging prospective students to consider polytechnics, colleges of education, and vocational institutions as viable alternatives.

He emphasised that years of excessive preference for university education have weakened the country’s technical and vocational education system, despite the critical role those institutions play in producing skilled professionals, technicians, innovators and entrepreneurs needed for national development.

Obidah further advocated increased government investment in tertiary education through expanded infrastructure, improved learning facilities, enhanced funding and better welfare for academic and non-academic staff.