By Yinka Salaam
Lagos, May 11, ’25 (TNZ) Many Nigerians have expressed concerns over the result of the just concluded Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), indicating that only 21.5 per cent (420,415 candidates) out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 UTME scored 200 and above.
Available data showed that 75 per cent of candidates scored below 200 in the examination, with less than one per cent scoring above 300. Most of the candidates scored between 160 and 199, accounting for 50.29 per cent (983,187 candidates), while 334,560 candidates (17.11 per cent) fell within the 200-249 score range.
Another 488,197 candidates (24.97 per cent) scored between 140 and 159, and 73,441 (3.76 per cent) achieved scores from 250 to 299. A smaller percentage of candidates, 57,419 (2.94 per cent), scored between 120 and 139, while 3,820 (0.20 per cent) scored between 100 and 119. Only 2,031 candidates (0.10 per cent) scored below 100.
The board, however, granted 40,247 underage candidates special approval to take the examination due to their exceptional academic ability. Only 467 of these underage candidates met the defined excellence threshold for the UTME. These candidates are expected to progress through three additional assessment stages to confirm their outstanding capabilities.
As usual, many were quick to attribute the poor performance to low admission cut-off marks, which enable many privately owned institutions and newly established ones to fill up their slots. They argued that many of the students know they will get admitted eventually if they don’t score very high marks.
But focusing only on the cut-off marks for some categories of higher institutions and some not-too-demanding courses may be misleading and may not allow us to focus on the real issues. A combination of factors is attributable to the dwindling students’ academic performance. We ned to dissect these factors.
If many students pass the entrance examinations, the cut-off will naturally improve, and JAMB won’t need to lower the benchmark score unnecessarily. An education analyst, Dr Tesleem Orewole, acknowledged that “this isn’t the first time we’re witnessing such alarming results”.
Orewole recalled that back in 2021, an even more shocking 87 per cent of candidates scored below the benchmark. According to him, this means, “what we are witnessing may be a positive development that needs to be improved upon, going by the recent performance. He, however, posited that the problem wasn’t just the students, but the system, the society, and the environment around education.
Viewing and hearing cultures
In this era, reading culture is virtually dead. And, it is yielding ground for the viewing and hearing cultures. These days, students are frolicking with TikTok, Yahoo (cyber crime, get-rich-quick syndrome), hookup (Oloso) platforms and so on. Orewole also identified a lack of reward for excellence as another problem facing education in the country.
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At this age, brilliant students in tertiary institutions are winning inter-collegiate quizzes and inter-university debates. Many of them engaged in academic and brain-tasking science and technology competitions. They, however, go home with a paltry or ridiculous amount as prize money.
But, winners of practically useless entertainment programmes and TV reality shows go home with huge sums of prize money, car gifts, and houses. Such winners are appointed as Youth Ambassadors by unworthy politicians, while those who excel in academic competitions are often ignored and largely unrewarded.
At the end of the day, many universities do organise post-UTME to uphold the standard. UTME can’t be the only yardstick to adjudged brilliance, readiness and fitness for a particular course. It is just a requirement. JAMB Registrar has explained this on many occasions.
JAMB has explained before that examination may not be the true test of ability in all cases. A student may score low marks in the UTME because of subject combination, not necessarily because he or she is not brilliant. Someone who wants to study history, philosophy, psychology or religious study may be required to write Economics and Government in the examination.
Sometimes, the students may not necessarily need some of these subjects to survive in the chosen course of study. It may also be because of toughness of the papers, just as it may be because of stress or lateness to the examination hall, malfunction of the CBT computers, non-versatility in the use of ICT equipment and so on.
What many critics are not aware of is that, at times, a large percentage of UTME candidates are underage or SS2 students who merely sat for the examination for familiarity sake and to garner confidence – just to warm up. Such students are actually not ready for the admission, hence, higher marks should not be expected from such students. Consequently, these set of students swell up the number of those who sat for and fail the examination.
Herculean Task
Subsequently, Dr Orewole submitted that Nigerians have a herculean task ahead. “To change the narrative, we must: rebuild our economy, so that hard work pays, restore value to education, so our best minds don’t keep running abroad and celebrate integrity and academic achievement; not flashy lifestyles funded by crime.
“Until then, we will keep producing UTME results that reflect not just poor preparation, but a broken value system. It’s time to wake up, Nigeria. Let’s fix this,” he concluded.
Hence, all hands must be on deck to improve education in Nigeria. Government cannot do it all. Why the government, its agencies, law enforcement agents and the judiciary must wake up to their billings, parents, religious bodies, the relevant NGOs as well the students themselves must do the right thing to return to the part of academic excellence. (TNZ)
Salaam, Osun State Editor of Voice of Nigeria (VON) wrote from Osogbo
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