Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has called on the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, to stop giving “preferential scores” to students in Northern Nigeria.
Appearing on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’, the Governor said it was wrong for the students in the North who sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, to get preferential treatment.
El-Rufai said that all students in the country should get the same cut-off marks and that students in the North should not be given lower cut-off marks.
“The north has always been behind in education, we’ve continuously been the disadvantaged region right from independence even though we’re given preferences, JAMB scores and all that. That has not helped; in fact, it has made our people lazy,” the Governor said.
The Governor said instead of the differential JAMB and Federal Government scores, students in the North should be encouraged to work hard and compete with the other regions.
According to JAMB, Nigeria’s tertiary institutions will now determine their admission benchmark.
This decision was made at the 2021 policy meeting presided over by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu.
