Nigerians react to JAMB’s cut-off marks, bemoan decaying education system 

By Deborah Onatunde

This year’s cut-off mark for admission into tertiary institutions following the low success recorded in this year’s Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has been  received with mixed feelings by Nigerian youths.

Recall that on July 21, JAMB pegged the minimum cut-off score for admission into the universities at 140 for the 2022/2023 academic session while it put that of Polytechnics at 120, and Colleges of Education at 100.

The resolution followed the announcement that out of the over 1.7 million candidates that sat for the examination, only 378,639 scored 200 and above.

This is coming amid the lingering industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

Speaking with Nigerian NewsDirect, a graduate of University of Benin (UNIBEN), Ose Etiko, disclosed that the proposed cut-off mark is a measure of filtering those that are unqualified to be in an institution as he emphasised that JAMB is pointless “as we do not have an educational system in Nigeria again.”

According to Etiko, “Candidates who cannot meet up to the cut-off mark do not deserve to be admitted.

“JAMB is pointless. There is no need for JAMB since the cut-off is 140. You do not deserve to be in school if you can’t meet up to the newly announced cut-off mark as this are used to filter candidate to institutions.”

For a Philosophy student of Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Tiwa Adegbemi, JAMB has been turned to a business for officials as students keep writing countless times.

Adegbemi bemoaned the failure of the country’s education sector.

“Jamb is making money from candidates as most people write jamb 11 times or more before making the cut-off, and the school still gives its own cut-off. Nigeria Education is a failed one from facilities to the Lecturers,” she said.

A JAMB candidate, Felix Sowode, could not hide his displeasure at the sudden decrease in JAMB’S cut-off mark.

According to Sowode, “140 JAMB cut-off mark shows the level of decay in education. This is so sad.”

Mr. Abeoye Badina expressed his thoughts on the instability in the JAMB cut-off mark, which, according to him, has been falling drastically for the past years from 200 to 180 then 140.

He believes that soon, cut-off mark to be admitted in universities and polytechnics would be 100 and 50 respectively.

“Education has been falling drastically for the past 4 years from 200 to 180 then 140. Soon it will be 100 for universities and 50 for Polytechnic. School system is becoming weakened as time goes,” he said.