The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has disagreed with the governor of Kaduna State, Dr Nasir el-Rufai who said northern candidates for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) are treated preferentially with lower cutoff marks not extended to their counterparts in other parts of the country.
Recall that El-Rufai had on a Channels Television programme on Monday called on JAMB to stop spoiling northern candidates with lower entry scores so that they would be competitive nationally and internationally.
He said lowering cutoff marks for candidates of northern extraction makes them indolent.
“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.
“Against this differential JAMB and federal government scores, I think people should be encouraged to work hard and compete and we are prepared to make our children in Kaduna State to be competitive, not only in the state but globally,” he said.
Reacting to the governor’s allegation, spokesman for JAMB, Dr Fabian Benjamin said the board had, since its inception in 1978 not been fixing the minimum scores for schools.
He said the board’s responsibility is solely to conduct matriculation examinations for entry into all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in the country and to place suitably qualified candidates in the available places in these institutions.
“We don’t give preferential or differential cut-off marks to candidates. Candidates are admitted on the scores as defined by institutions. As for the UTME, they sit for the examination and it is what they obtain that is the basis for their selection after the policy meeting has authorised the commencement of admission.
“There are no preferential cut-off marks for anybody. What people refer to as the cut-off mark is the minimum score and each institution sets its own minimum score; it is a function of performance in the UTME for the year, subscription to programmes and institutions that is how many candidates have applied to the institutions or for the programmes. These are what push the minimum score either up or down for institutions or programmes.
“The determining factor is the subscription to a particular programme or school. If the subscription is very low, technically, it will affect the minimum score for the programme,” he said.
