Over 1.7m candidates sat for 2022 UTME only 378,639 scored above 200

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has revealed that out of the 1,761,338 candidates that wrote the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, only 378,693 scored above 200.

JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede made this known on Thursday, July 21, 2022, during the Board’s 2022 policy meeting in Abuja.

The Statistics: While less than 400,000 candidates scored above 200, a total of 520,596 candidates scored 190 and above.

Giving further statistics for the 2022 UTME, Oloyede said 704,991 candidates scored 180 and above; 934,103 scored 170 and above; 1,192, 057 scored 160 and above.

He added that the Board allowed candidates with awaiting results to sit for the 2022 UTME.

“JAMB allowed awaiting results candidates to register and sit for the 2022 UTME. These candidates can’t be considered for admission on awaiting result status. They must present their O’level results on the board’s portal before the commencement of admissions”, he said.

Why this matters: The statistics announced by Prof Oloyede showed that only 21.5 percent of the candidates scored above 200.

This indicates a mass failure in the exam given the fact that the cut-off mark for university admission especially in Federal Universities in the country is pegged at 200.

In 2021, the poor performance of candidates recorded in the UTME was attributed to COVID-19.

According to Prof Oloyede, the COVID-19 pandemic affected the smooth running of the academic calendar.

In 2021, only 168, 613 candidates out of over one million candidates that wrote the exam scored above 200.

While the 2022 performance statistics is an improvement on the 2021 result, it still points to the fact the majority of the candidates performed poorly in the exam.