The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) said that it did not give “preferential cut-off marks” to candidates who take the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) from northern states.
This was in reaction to Malam Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, who earlier accused the Board of giving preferential treatment to UTME candidates in northern states and called on the Board, to stop giving “preferential scores” to students in northern Nigeria.
Speaking on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’, el Rufai said it was wrong for the students in the North who sit for the UTME to get preferential treatment at the expense of their counterparts in southern states.
Reacting, the JAMB’s Head of Information and Media, Dr Fabian Benjamin, in a statement insisted that the exam body does not give preferential cut-off marks for anybody.
“JAMB doesn’t give preferential cut-off marks to candidates. Candidates are only admitted according to the scores defined by institutions.
”The students sit for the UTME examination and it is what they obtain that is the basis for their selection after the policy meeting has authorised the commencement of admission.
“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.
”The determining factor is the subscription to a particular programme or school. If the subscription is very low, then it will affect the minimum score for the programme,” he said.
