JAMB Registrar Reveals Why There Was Poor Performance In 2021 UTME

Is-haq Oloyede, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, has blamed the coronavirus epidemic for candidates’ low performance in the recently finished Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

Oloyede claimed that this year’s UTME scores were worse than three years ago when appearing on a live show on the Nigerian Television Authority’s “Weekend File.”

The registrar stated that the COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the academic timetable.

In 2021, he claimed, 99.65% of students received 120 or higher out of a possible 400, compared to 99.80% in 2020.

Oloyede said, “In 2018, it was 99.99 per cent but in 2019 it dropped to 99.92.

“Also, in 2020, 69.82 per cent of the total candidates who sat the UTME scored 160 and above but in 2021, it reduced to 65.62 per cent.

“But this is expected. In Nigeria, we think we do not live in a global community. All informed education experts understand why it is so. They knew the point at which we were in the academic calendar before the examination was taken in 2020 and in 2021.

“Last year, when they took the examination, they (the students) had gone far in their syllabus. But this year, they suffered incomplete academic sessions; they had to cope with emergency online lessons and even many other disturbances like insecurity.”