The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has raised concern over the slow pace of admission processes across Nigeria’s tertiary institutions for the candidates who sat the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The examination body in its latest weekly bulletin said only about 100,000 out of about 600,000 eligible candidates have been offered admission by the institutions and uploaded on the JAMB’s Central Admission Processing System (CAPS), an admission regulatory and monitoring portal which is domiciled on the JAMB website.
The figure, which represents only 16.67 per cent of eligible candidates, is too little according to the examination body, especially considering the commencement of the preparation for the 2022 edition of the examination.
The 600,000 eligible candidates are among a total of about 1.4 million candidates that sat the UTME and obtained the direct entry forms in 2021.
Briefing some selected institutional desk officers recently, JAMB’s director of admissions, Mohammed Ahmad, implored institutions to quickly conclude admissions for the candidates for them to know their fate.
He said: “Even if they are not ready for the students to resume, they can conduct such admissions prior to their respective chosen resumption dates to enable their candidates to know their fate.”
According to Mr Ahmad, over 1.4 million candidates registered for both the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE) out of which only about 600,000 possessed the requisite qualifications to be admitted based on available records with the examination body.
However, tertiary institutions have blamed the low admission rate on the disruption caused by the COVID19 pandemic, which left institutions with admitted candidates from the 2020 JAMB who are yet to begin their studies, and thereby limiting the number of applicants the institutions can admit.
But JAMB said it is aware of the challenges that have impacted their academic calendars, and urged them to devise acceptable means of closing the gap and complete the 2021 admission exercise on schedule.
Mr Ahmad said the call for institutions to urgently finalise their admission process for 2021 became necessary, as the board has concluded all arrangements to begin the sale of forms for the 2022 UTME/DE registration.
He said it is important to prevent candidates from incurring “unnecessary expenses” through buying new e-pins that they may not use if they are eventually admitted.
JAMB has, however, clarified that although it has concluded all arrangements to begin the sale of forms for the 2022 UTME/DE registration, there is no date for the commencement yet.
In its weekly bulletin published on Monday, JAMB said: “It should be noted that the commencement of the sale of the Board’s application documents in any given year has never been shrouded in mystery rather it is always a well-publicised undertaking in the print media as well as online and electronic platforms.”
“Although the Board has concluded all arrangements to commence the sale of the 2022 UTME/DE Application Documents in due course, it is yet to fix any date for its commencement.”
Meanwhile, in preparation for the 2022 UTME exercise, the board also announced that it has changed the literary texts for five subjects including Literature-in-English, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Arabic.
