[Adesewa]

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) recently issued guidelines for admission of candidates into federal, state and private universities in Nigeria for the 2016/2017 academic session. Announcement of the guidelines followed a week-long meeting held with administrators of universities and other tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The new set of guidelines which consist of some parameters called the Point System Option (PSO) authorizes tertiary institutions to charge fees for screening of candidates seeking admission through the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE).

According to the guidelines, a candidate must have been offered provisional admission by JAMB before he/she could be considered for screening by an admitting institution. In the PSO guidelines, a candidate who submits only one Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) result which could be from WAEC, NECO or NABTEB earns ten points while another who combines two separate results earned after two sittings only earns two points, putting the latter at a disadvantage. PSO also grades the credit level passes obtained by candidates in each subject into different points. These are A=6, B=4, and C=3; this limits the admission chances of a candidate with lower credit pass even though A, B, and C are all credit passes.