How leaked memo exposed trends in securing admission into varsities

“My son registered and wrote the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) three times before he was able to secure admission into the university to study,” said Mr Ifeanyi Ozoemena.

At each sitting, Ifeanyi’s son scored above 200 marks but failed to secure admission to study his desired course, Computer Science, at one of the universities in South-West Nigeria.

He said it was after a friend introduced him to a staff of the university after his son wrote the third entrance exam that he secured admission.

Thus, gaining admission to most public universities is not just about scoring points, but also about who you know to help you, Daily Trust gathered.

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Another parent, Eucharia Azu, said her son also missed securing admission with his mates despite scoring higher than the cut-off mark set by the university for the course he applied to study. 

She said the course he was seeking admission to study was highly sought after, making it more ‘about who you know’.

Mrs Azu said some people get admission based on merit with the reforms at the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), but “You need people who can push for you and that gives you a level of assurance that someone is there to ensure your child is not passed by.” 

She bemoaned the relegation of merit while “money buys for you everything.”

Another parent said after he tried to use some people in the education sector to influence his son’s admission he opted to pay for it.

“It was the only option I had after he could not secure admission the previous year and I did not want him to remain at home, “ he said

Admission into tertiary institutions, especially universities, has over time become difficult because of the challenge of access.

In his presentation on the 2023 Admission Exercise, the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is’haq Oloyede, said from over 1,635,881 applications for UTME and Direct Entry, only 639,263 candidates were admitted into tertiary institutions across the country.

This was in July 2024. The limited space and capacity of the universities to absorb qualified candidates to study has pushed many desperate parents into paying to secure admission for their children, including politicians who use their influence to peddle slots for their preferred candidates.

Meanwhile,  a memo from a senator to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja seeking admission for students was leaked and it went viral generating divergent views online.

In the leaked memo, the senator appealed to the university leadership to grant admission to four students to pursue various courses including Medicine, Public Administration, Computer Science and Law in the school.

The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) scores as contained in the letter had 264 as the highest to study Law, followed by 205, also applying for Law, 181 for Computer Science, 191 for Public Administration, and 222 for Medicine and Surgery.

Reacting to the incident, an X user, @Govern_mend said, “Nigerian senator writes to seek university admission for constituents,” asking, “Does a public office holder need to write a letter to a school for any student to be admitted?”

Another wrote: “This is why many do not get admission into some universities.”

This, however, is not new as a former vice chancellor had told Daily Trust that the requests he gets from lawmakers and people in power were usually high and made the admission process difficult for them.

The admission rate in Nigerian universities is placed at about less than 40 percent of the total number of applicants, leaving the rest to scramble for another chance the following year, which many are not likely to get.

This has left parents and applicants to universities across the country disappointed and disillusioned and a few  others  going to private institutions.

Sources from one of the universities in the North, however, told Daily Trust that demand for admission by politicians doesn’t translate to automatic admission for the candidates.

“If you don’t have up to the required cut-off mark on your JAMB (score), you don’t get admitted here,” a source said.

“I can tell you that because there’s the National University Commission (NUC) accreditation, JAMB is watching. We don’t take anybody with less than 180. And this place is very competitive.”

Another source from the University of Abuja denied pressure from politicians for admission saying, “There’s no harm in trying to use their power; trying to use their office. They don’t get it. JAMB will not allow that.”

Prof. Ugo Sylvester, a lecturer at the University of Abuja and chairman of the institution’s Academic Staff Union, while speaking on politicians’ perceived interference in admissions, said it was commonplace for parents or anyone else to seek help where they think they could get it.

He said the leaked memo wasn’t a directive but an appeal thus it was not mandatory to be acted upon as being perceived.

“It’s a request, which you can turn down,” he said. “If you feel that there is no opportunity, you turn it down.”

He, however, pointed at the age-long issue of what is called the “VC List” for admissions.

“VC list is not a merit list. VC list is after the merit list; these other requests people make, whether staff or people in government, they now make a request to the vice-chancellor. And the vice-chancellor can bring them and they make up the VC list. It has been there,” he explained.

Prof. Sylvester noted that the reaction from Nigerians is based on the anger and frustration across the country. Having “suffered so much at the hands of the political elite, people don’t look at them as normal spectacle. People look at them with the spectacle of oppression because of what they have suffered over time.”