Despite the protests that have arisen from the University of Lagos’s new cut-off point as opposed to the national benchmark of 180, the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board ( JAMB), at the weekend, supported the decision, stating that Nigerian universities must entrench global standards and ensure competitiveness.
The board noted that the the decision to align with the institution’s new cut-off mark was to position Nigerian universities as the centres of excellence.
According to JAMB Head of Media and Information, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the board has 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 was a bench mark to set the tone for 2015 admission exercise.
“The decision to have a national accepted cut-off mark at policy meeting 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. 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 is aimed at ensuring that our universities admit only the top best as done globally,” he said.
Benjamin stated that 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.
On the way forward, he said: “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.”
