Cut-Off Marks: El-Rufai Is Wrong – JAMB

• JAMB has established that it does not award “preferential cut-off marks” to students in any region.

JAMB has nullified El-Rufai’s claim on making northern students lazy by giving preferential treatment. Recall that Kaduna State Governor, northwest Nigeria, Nasir El-Rufai, had stated that lower cut-off marks for Northern candidates have made them lazy.

EkoHotBlog reports that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has explained that it does not award “preferential cut-off marks” to students who sit the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination from the northern part of the country.

In reaction, the Board said El-Rufai was wrong in saying that UTME candidates of northern extraction enjoyed special privileges or lower cut-off marks not benefited by candidates in other parts of the country.

READ ALSO

VAT: The Fight Is Against The System Not Buhari -Wike

The Constitution Is Clear, We Can Transmit Results Electronically – INEC

Bandits Will Soon Kidnap Four Governors – Deji Adeyanju

19-Year-Old Woman Stabs Husband To Death After Forced Marriage

Reno Omokri Says Wizkid Is More Relevant To Nigeria Than Buhari

64-Year-Old Man Defiles A 2-Year-Old-Girl In Ogun

He said it is injustice in the country and everyone must fight

This was disclosed by JAMB’s Head of Information and Media, Fabian Benjamin in an interview with The PUNCH monitored by our Reporter.

Benjamin stressed that JAMB had not been the one setting the minimum scores for schools since its inception in 1978 as a government agency saddled with the responsibility of “conducting 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.”

His statement reads that “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 authorized 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.”