The Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, has disclosed that only 0.06 percent representing about 803 of the more than 1.3 million candidates who sat for the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, (UTME), scored 300 and above.
A total of 1,338,687 candidates registered for the 2021 UTME, which commenced nationwide from May 19, 2021 and ended on July 3.
Oloyede, who appeared on a television programme at the weekend, admitted that candidates performed below expectation this year when compared to previous years for obvious reasons, especially the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to the closure of schools and insecurity which made it impossible for many schools to cover the necessary syllabus.
He noted that statistics of the results in the last four years, 2018 for example, showed that those who scored 120 and below were about 99.99% of the candidates, 99.92 in 2019, 99.80 in 2020 and this year 99.65, a drop of .25% from that of last year.
He added that those who scored 160 and above, last year was 69.82%, while this year is 45.62%, disclosing further that those who scored more than 300 over 400, last year were 0.26% of the candidates, this year .06%, and in 2019, 0.16% of candidates scored above 300.
He added for instance, that those who take examinations and scored 400, over 400 and do not have 5 credits would be admitted.
The Registrar further explained that it is the five credits that qualified a candidate, but because those who are eager to go into certain programmes are more than the spaces available that the Board had to conduct an examination to rank them.
