'70% of admission quota unmet in 5 years' - Registrar

Oloyede made the statement on Wednesday, November 9, in Abuja during a visit from the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and Tertiary Education Fund, led by its Chairman, Senator Jibrin Barau, Punch reports.

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According to the reports, the organisation blamed the inability to fill the quota on the Federal Government's insistence that institutions comply with uniformity of cut-off marks.

Punch reports that Oloyede said the adoption of 180 as the cut-off mark for admission into tertiary institutions has continued to frustrate candidates, who may be qualified but have lesser cut-off points.

Oloyede said that tertiary institutions should be allowed to decide on their cut-off points based on the number of candidates who applied to the institution for admission.

Oloyede said, “Every year, we do not meet 70 per cent of the quota, contrary to what people think that there are more people than the existing places. We have in the last five years not filled 70 per cent of the quota. We need to ask a question: why? The simple answer is a mismatch.

“I can say it without any doubt that it has never been obeyed. It is only obeyed on papers. When you talk about the practice of it, there are hundreds of people in our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education that have not gone through JAMB.

“The reason is that we are setting standards that cannot be obeyed. They will now go through the back door and recruit people with 160, 150, 140 and some who did not take JAMB at all because you have made 180 the minimum.

“I went to colleges of education in Kano and Jigawa; all the institutions, when I toured the place to have a first-hand information, they told me: ‘look, we know you; you will say obey the rules. This is the rule, the rule cannot be obeyed’.

“Why? If you obey 180, 70 per cent of our Colleges of Education will be out of duty because they will have no student. What they do is that they recruit with 140, 130 and they just say ‘let JAMB be doing what JAMB is doing.”

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Earlier, Oloyede lamented that inadequate funding is posing a threat to the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.

He also said that extending the exams validity would do more harm than good and that many things had to be considered before a decision can be reached.