JAMB Registrar Is-haq Oloyede, has censured the coronavirus pandemic for the appalling performance of candidates in the just-ended Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
He made this disclosure on a live television programme on Nigerian Television Authority themed “Weekend File”. He disclosed that the UTME results of this year was so bad than those of the previous years.
He blamed the COVID-19 which halted the smooth running of the academic calendar. The Professor of Islamics, an academic and public servant stated that in 2021, 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.”
