Only 30 per cent UTME candidates ‘ll be admitted this year, says NUC

OWING to limited spaces in the universities, only 30 per cent out of the 1.7 million candidates who wrote the unified tertiary matriculation examination (UTME) will be admitted this year, National Universities Commission (NUC) Executive Secretary Prof. Abubakar Rasheed has said.

Prof. Rasheed spoke at a one-day public hearing on the regulatory conflict between JAMB and universities in offering admission in Nigeria.

The hearing was organised by Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund on Tuesday.

The NUC boss said the limited spaces in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions have made admission crisis inevitable.

According to Rasheed, the only way to avert admission crisis is to either expand access or create more universities to accommodate students.

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

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

JAMB Registrar Prof. Is-haq Oloyede said there was no conflict between JAMB and universities.

Prof. Oloyede said most of the candidates, who sit for its examination annually do not have the required qualification to gain admission.

He 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 exam, I can say conveniently that not more than 30 per cent of them are not prepared for admission; they are just trying. They do not have the five O’Level required to go into the university.

“Secondly, let me also let us realise that 10 per cent of the 1.7 million that we see or 1.9 million as the case may be, they 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 sitting at the point of sitting 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 over 400 if you do not have the five O’Level, you cannot come into the university. The basic qualification is the five O’Level.”