The Education Minister, Prof. Tahir Mamman, has reversed his earlier directive that only candidates aged 18 and above are eligible for admission into tertiary institutions.
During the ongoing policy meeting organized by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Abuja, Mamman initially announced that only applicants who were 18 years or older would be eligible for admission.
However, stakeholders at the meeting opposed this directive, arguing that it would be unfair to deny admission to 16-year-old students who passed WAEC and JAMB.
In response to the stakeholders’ feedback, the minister agreed that candidates aged 16 and above would be eligible for admission this year, with the 18-year minimum age requirement to be implemented next year.
Meanwhile, JAMB has approved 140 as the cut-off mark for 2024 admission into universities and 100 for polytechnics and colleges of education. This decision was made during the 2024 annual policy meeting on admissions, held at the Body of Benchers Headquarters in Abuja.
Following the successful conduct of the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), in which 1,989,668 candidates registered, the policy meeting chaired by Minister Mamman set the National Minimum Tolerable UTME Score (NTMUS) at 140 for universities and 100 for polytechnics and colleges of education. Of the registered candidates, 80,810 were absent, and 1,904,189 took the UTME.
JAMB Registrar, Is-haq Oloyede, announced the cut-off marks, noting that while individual institutions can raise their minimum benchmarks, they cannot go below the approved marks for their respective categories.