From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has said that often times, Nigerians accuse it wrongly particularly in its constitutional role of offering tertiary institution admissions to deserving candidates.
The board explained why majority of students that sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in the past failed to secure admissions even when some of them might have reached or exceeded the cut-off marks.
JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, said in Abuja that aside other criteria like merit, catchment area and educational less advantage states, recent studies indicated that majority of the candidates are not qualified for admission for one reason or the other.
He said: “We have carried out studies and discovered that in recent time, some of the candidates that sat for the UTME don’t have their O’ Level results ready before the commencement of admissions, and even those that have their results ready don’t have the right combinations that is required for admissions into certain courses.
“It is unfortunate that in the past, JAMB would announce that so, so and so millions of candidates registered and sat for UTME. But at the end, you would discover that majority of them lack the basic requirements for admission. By the time JAMB weeds out these unqualified candidates, you will be left with either 600 or 700 candidates that are qualified.