The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has verified that applicants’ performance in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) was lower than in the previous three years or so.
The JAMB Registrar, Is-haq Oloyede, confirmed this on Saturday evening while appearing on a live programme on a Nigerian Television Authority’s (NTA) programme tagged ”Weekend File.”
Mr Oloyede, who blamed the development on the truncation of the academic calendar due to the rampaging coronavirus pandemic, also listed what he described as peculiar environmental factors in Nigeria such as insecurity, among others.
He, however, cautioned critics that the performance would not affect the chances of the candidates in securing admission to their chosen higher institutions, saying the UTME is a ranking examination and not an achievement test.
Statistics
Reeling out the statistics on the programme, Mr Oloyede said when the data of candidates who scored 120 marks and above out of the possible 400 in 2021 is compared to what obtained in 2020, there is a difference of 0.25 per cent. But it is worse when 2018 and 2019 performances are taken into consideration.
According to the registrar, the percentage of those who scored 120 marks and above out of the possible 400 in 2021 is 99.65 of the entire candidates but the figure stood at 99.80 in 2020.
He said: ”In 2018, it was 99.99 per cent but in 2019 it dropped to 99.92.
“Also, in 2020, 69.82 per cent of the total candidates who sat the UTME scored 160 and above but in 2021, it reduced to 65.62 per cent.”
Mr Oloyede added that in 2019, the percentage of those who scored more than 300 out of the possible 400 marks was 0.16 per cent while it was 0.26 per cent in 2020. But in 2021, he said the figure fell steeply to 0.06 per cent.