UTME: No Guidelines on Uniformity of Scores for Institutions, Says JAMB

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said there is no uniform minimum Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) scores for any of the tiers of tertiary institutions, as it has not decided the requirements for any institution.

The Head of Public Affairs and Protocol of JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, stated this in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday.

“The board does not and has never determined any uniform national UTME scores otherwise known as cut-off mark by the general public for any tertiary institution because, in actual sense, there are no uniform national UTME scores.

“The lucid process of admission which the former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Nasir Fagge, expounded is the exact process being followed in the conduct of admission exercise to tertiary institutions in the country,” Benjamin said.

He said the process has even been improved upon with the elimination of human interefence through its full automation with the introduction of the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS).

The board said for the purpose of emphasis, it conducts the UTME and hands over the results to institutions for the conduct of admissions.

“However, before the admission exercise commences, a policy meeting is held with all the Heads of the institutions in attendance and chaired by the Hon. Minister of Education. At this meeting, the admission guidelines, which include recommendations from individual institutions and their preferred minimum admission scores are presented and deliberated upon at the meeting and not JAMB as erroneously portrayed by Prof. Fagge, because JAMB is only a member out of the close to about a thousand participants at the meeting.

“Prior to the meeting, for instance, more than 50% of the universities had submitted in writing their minimum scores of 200 and above to the Board for presentation to the meeting for the purpose of deliberation. The same applied for the other tiers of tertiary institutions. The implication of this process is that no institution would be able to admit any candidate with any score below what they had submitted as their minimum scores.

“Perhaps, it is also apt to address the series of misconceptions as to what is generally described as ‘uniform minimum national UTME score’ for admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria entails. For some time now, many candidates and some members of the general public have been under the erroneous impression that there is a minimum national UTME score set by the Board, which they also refer to as ‘cut-off point’. The truth is that there is nothing like a national minimum UTME score for all Universities, Polytechnics or Colleges of Education in Nigeria as it is only individual institutions which set their minimum entry scores based on their peculiarities,” the statement stated.

The JAMB spokesman added that the Board has no role whatsoever in the decision of the institutions to determine how or with what criteria they want to admit, while emphasising that the role of the Board is to ensure that the goalpost is not shifted in the middle of the game.