The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has explained that admissions would be given only to qualified candidates who applied for courses into the various institutions of the country.
The board reiterated this in its Vol. 1, No 13 weekly Bulletin of the Office of the Registrar and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja.
It described as misleading and erroneous, information being circulated that over 50 per cent of candidates who yearly apply for admissions into various institutions, were not admitted.
It also decried the reports that every year, after the conduct of the Unified Tertiary and Universities Examination (UTME), where millions of candidates apply, barely 20 per cent get admitted.
“The truth is that, admissions can only be given to qualified candidates, hence, any figure being bandied around should equally be based on the total number of candidates who applied and are qualified.
“It will be an unfortunate postulation if the candidates who do not have any basis to be considered for admissions to any tier of the nation’s tertiary institutions are also included in the final tabulation of candidates admitted.
“Given this scenario, it will be absurd for any narrative to assume huge admission backlogs without first considering whether the candidates that are not admitted are actually qualified for the courses they applied for.”
The board noted that in 2018, a total of 1,793,018 candidates applied for admissions into various academic programmes of 849 institutions in the country, with 140,020 applying through Direct Entry (DE).
Source: NAN
