Nigerian Tertiary Institutions Can’t Admit More Than 800, 000 Candidates, Says JAMB Registrar

The Registrar and Chief Executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Dibu Ojerinde has disclosed that in spite of new universities that were recently established, the carrying capacity of all tertiary institutions in Nigeria is less than 800,000.

He said these were the available spaces for the over 1.4 million candidates that sat for the 2015 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Ojerinde, who spoke in an interview with select journalists on Wednesday, regretted that the good intention of the Board to redistribute candidates from overloaded institutions to where admissions could be offered to them was opposed by the people.  

He said: “The carrying capacity all over the country including universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, among others, is less than 800,000 and 1.47 million sat for the examination.”

Ojerinde also called on the Federal Government to remove the dichotomy between Bachelors degree acquired from Universities and Polytechnics’ Higher National Diploma (HND). He said the discrimination was responsible for the crave for university degrees to the detriment of technical and skilled education in the country.