Universities Suspend Processing 461,745 Students’ Admission Over Strike

• ASUU emergency congress holds Monday

The suspension of academic activities in Nigerian universities has led to the failure of the universities to process a total of 461,745 admissions, iDeemlawful reports

Investigation by Saturday PUNCH has revealed.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board in the statistics provided for our correspondent, however, blamed the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities for the development.

 “Some institutions confirmed suspending the process because of the ASUU strike; ASUU strike is a factor; many institutions are yet to commence 2021 admissions despite repeated appeals,” JAMB noted in the document.

Our correspondent also gathered that a total of 36,947 candidates of the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations processed their admissions in private institutions

Explaining further, JAMB noted that a total of 774,411 admission quotas were given to Nigerian universities to be split between federal, state and private universities.

For the federal universities, a total of 424,442 quotas were allocated.

However, our correspondent observed that only 136,527 admissions were processed despite over 595,757 candidates applying to 10 federal universities alone.

State universities got a total of 232,801 admissions quota but were only able to process admissions of 139,192 before the commencement of the strike.

Similarly, JAMB admitted that a total of 117,411 admission quotas were awarded to private universities but the board noted that only 36,947 quotas were filled.

Further analysis of the data revealed that some programmes also had lots of unfilled admission quotas.

For instance, Medicine/Pharmacy, which had a total of 39,850, only admitted 33,671 before commencement of the strike

Social Sciences departments only admitted 53,723 applicants despite the 89,747 admissions quota given by JAMB

Similarly, Sciences department with 121,696 quotas only admitted a total of 70,221.

Engineering, technology only admitted 35,051 despite a total of 58,451 quotas; Arts and Humanities also admitted 31,478 despite a quota of 47,727.

Similarly, for Law, the board noted that only 5,630 quotas were filled despite the 8,055 quotas allocated.

Giving further statistics, JAMB indicated that the strike also affected admissions for the 2020 exercise.

The board, however, gave the total of admissions processed at 551,553.

Meanwhile for the 2022/2023 admission, the board noted that a total of 1,649,310 candidates applied for university admission

Though the board did not give a breakdown of the applications by category of universities applied to, it noted that over 500,000 of these applicants applied to 10 federal universities namely University of Ilorin; University of Lagos; Nnamdi Azikwe University; Bayero University Kano; University of Benin; Federal University Oye-Ekiti; Obafemi Awolowo University; University of Nigeria; Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Ibadan.

 Speaking in an interview with our correspondent, the Programme Director, Reform Education Nigeria, Ayodamola Oluwatoyin, said, “This is one of the consequences of the ASUU strike. Once there is a strike, activities are suspended.

“What is the hope of those who wrote the UTME in 2022 if the ones who wrote the UTME before them are yet to get admitted?

Meanwhile, sources within the National Executive Council of ASUU confirmed to our correspondent that branch congresses will commence by Monday.

Saturday PUNCH had exclusively reported that the union had commenced consultations over the results of the meeting with the Emeritus Professor Nimi-Briggs.

 “Branch congresses will start on Monday unfailingly”, the source said.

Meanwhile, the National President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, insisted that the union would not call off its strike

“You heard the minister say that they would not pay us for the months we did not work. We have already given him an answer; we will move to a fresh session entirely,” Osodeke said