By JOHN ONAH, Abuja –
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), as well as the Federal Government have pegged the cutoff mark for admission into Nigerian universities at 140 in the new academic session, 2024/2025.
The decision was taken at the 2024 Combined Policy meeting on admissions into tertiary institutions and 4th edition of NATAP-M Awards in Abuja on Thursday.
At the event which was held at the Auditorium and Banquet Hall, Body of Bencher headquarters, the cutoff mark for admission into Polytechnics and Colleges of Education was also pegged at 100
Also during the meeting, Minister of Education, Prof Mamman Tahir, announced that candidates seeking admission into higher institutions must be 18 and above.
According to him, it was already a policy which the government has keyed into because it is the expectation that candidates are much more matured at 18years.
He said if anyone was aggrieved they can approach the National Assembly for amendment.
However, after a protest from the stakeholders currently participating at the 2024 Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) policy meeting, the Minister suspended his earlier announcement of 18 down to 16 years minimum till next year.
He however advised tertiary institutions to fully utilise their admission quotas in order to reduce the teeming number of qualified candidates who could not gain admission every year.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, who was also at the meeting, disclosed that every institution is at liberty to determine the minimum UTME score acceptable to it for admission noting that, for DE, each institution will determine the number of points required by it for direct entry admission.
” Nevertheless, no institution can recommend or admit any candidate withe less than 2 points for direct entry. In the same vain, no institution can admit/accept the transfer of a candidate for any degree programme unless the candidate will spend on full time, not less thank 2 consecutive academic session in the institution”, he said.
