A political scientist and lawyer, Prof. Babafemi Badejo, says the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) 150 cut-off mark should not be seen as a definitive measure of an individual’s academic worth.
Badejo, a former Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, made this known in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Lagos.
NAN reports that JAMB, on Tuesday, announced 150 as the minimum cut-off score for admission into Nigerian universities for the 2025–2026 academic session.
The decision was reached during the 2025 Policy Meeting on Admissions, held at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in Abuja, with stakeholders from various tertiary institutions in attendance.
He said: “It should be made clear that one examination does not determine the academic worth of an individual.
“This is more so the case when, as a matter of fact, many universities seek an average of the JAMB result with performance at either the WAEC or NECO results.
“This also goes in line with the performance at a post-UTME results in deciding who gets admitted. “
He added that there was no doubt that the overall quality of young Nigerians being admitted into universities had radically reduced over time.
“This situation is a reflection of several underlying factors, including the quality of education at the lower levels of Nigeria’s educational system, as well as the remuneration of teachers at those levels.
“This situation not only leaves very little funding for the essential infrastructure needed in education, it also pushes many university-level lecturers to seek alternative sources of income,” he said.
According to him, such a scenario does not support the effective intellectual and moral development of young Nigerians.
The don emphasised the need to expand university spaces in response to the country’s growing population.
“A targeted expansion of facilities in select universities could allow for higher admissions while maintaining quality, by leveraging the benefits of economies of scale,” he noted.(NAN)
