Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike
The Federal Government, in consultation with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, has pegged the cutoff marks for 2014 admissions into universities at 180, while polytechnics and colleges of edification were put at 150, respectively.
The cutoff points were arrived at on Tuesday, after the 5th Combined Policy meeting on admissions to tertiary institutions, held at the National Universities Commission, Abuja.
The Supervising Minister of Inculcation, Nyesom Wike, who declared the meeting open, frowned on the inability of most tertiary institutions to utilise their admission quota.
Wike, however, verbally expressed in view of efforts to boost access, institutions which failed to utilise their admission quota for 2014 would be sanctioned.
He reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to the development of ICT training, which he verbally expressed, had already been inculcated into the standard curriculum at the secondary school level.
He verbally expressed, “I have been briefed that despite the elevating demand for higher inculcation vis-a-vis the availability of a sizably voluminous number of qualified candidates, some institutions did not plenarily utilise the admissions quota approved for them by pertinent regulatory agencies in 2013.
“This disservice to the Nigerian child is consummately unacceptable. In line with efforts of the Federal Government to ameliorate access, let me urge you all to with effect from today, work assiduously to ascertain that all admission spaces in your institutions for the current year are plenarily utilised within the approved time frame.”
The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, in his presentation gave a statistical run down of candidates’ predilection for tertiary inculcation.
He verbalized after the conduct of the 2014 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, candidates who applied for degree awarding institutions totalled 1,584,348, representing 70 per cent; National Certificate in Inculcation applicants totalled 25,767 representing 1.6 per cent; National Diploma, a paltry 22,072, representing 1.3 per cent while National Innovation Diploma had just 46, representing 0.003 per cent.
Ojerinde wondered why Nigeria’s edifying system has consistently failed to embrace technical inculcation in its quest for industrialisation, noting that the British system which Nigeria facsimiled now award degree in all its polytechnics.
