About 50 per cent of the 1.2 million candidates that met the Joint Board Matriculation Board (JAMB) cut-off mark have been given admission to their various university of choice with the remaining 50 per cent still unsure of their status.

The implications are that about 600,000 prospective university students are currently frustrated and unable to access their admission after being offered one by their respective institutions of choice.

Findings revealed that both the affected schools and candidates are blaming JAMB for the stalemate in the admission processes.

According to some of the university officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “The JAMB action to appropriate admission processes is frustrating to both the students and the schools.

“Do you know that most of the students are yet to access their admission in the JAMB portal?”

They alleged that the newly introduced Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) by the Board has stalled admission of many students “who can’t access the portal, leaving them stranded with deadline for admission having elapsed last week.”

But while speaking to THISDAY, Head of Media and Public Relations for JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, debunked such claims, saying they are misleading and borne out of ignorance of the admission processes.

Benjamin clarified that while they helped to facilitate examinations for candidates and ensured that standards were applied across board, it is actually the universities that propose admissions to candidates who must have passed both the JAMB and Post-UTME.

He said: “A candidate writes JAMB and if he meets the cut-off mark and sent to their university of choice, the institutions conduct the post-UTME and the admission officer computes the results and forwards the successful candidates to the Vice Chancellor who in turn proposes these candidates for admission.

“The JAMB will now screen these candidates to ensure they have the standard criteria and are qualified for admission. So we will approve depending on whether the candidates are eligible, and all they need to do is accept their admission at the portal which is accessible contrary to what you heard.

“Some institutions have unloaded but the heads of such institutions have not approved. It’s not from our end. The CAPS is managed by us but institutions and JAMB interface on it.”

On CAPS, Benjamin said the system was created to facilitate a central admission process to ensure uniformity and enforce standard.

He stressed that most of the candidates complaining about the situation did not care to find out if they meet the eligibility requirements like the possession of the necessary ‘O’ Levels, ‘A’ Levels among others.

Benjamin noted that based on eligibility criteria, over 80 percent of the candidates have processed their admission.

According to him, “About 1.7 million candidates sat for the last JAMB out of which 1.2 million passed with 600,000 (which is 50 percent) eligible for admission. I can tell you that out of that number, we have successfully processed the eligible candidates with 80 per cent accepting their admission at the portal so far.”

The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ish’aq Oloyede, had in September 2007 at the training and sensitisation Forum CAPS in Abuja, estimated that about 50 per cent of admission in the country’s tertiary institutions prior to 2016 were done through illegitimate means, promising to put a stop to it post-2016.

He said: “We have a situation; for example, if universities admit one million students, about 500,000 are done illegally. We do not yet have accurate data but we will regularise all the irregular admissions up to 2016. However, as from 2016 onwards, we cannot regularise anybody who got admitted through irregular means.”

Oloyede had clarified that contrary to public perception, JAMB is just a ranking and not an examination body like WAEC or NECO.

He said: “It is a screening body to rank already qualified students. It is not UTME that qualifies a person for admission but O’ Level. What JAMB does is just to rank presumably qualified person as pass or fail is not the focus of any ranking body.” (THISDAY)

Update news