The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC just donated over N500M to Nigerian Universities and higher institutions across the nation to facilitate innovations, research, and enhance development in the telecommunications sector. 

However, it is hard for these university students to benefit from interventions like this when ASUU has just indicated that its industrial strike will keep them out of school for another 4 weeks. 

On the other hand, those seeking to be admitted face uneven cut-off marks by different Universities. While JAMB has set a score of 140 as the minimum for a student to be eligible for admission through the 2022 examinations, its registrar indicated that over 50% of Nigerian Universities have already indicated a cut-off score of 200.

The exclusion of students with lower UTME scores from higher education through the university may have become more complicated with the scrapping of the Higher National Diploma (HND) in Polytechnics. 

The HND afforded candidates admitted for the Ordinary National Diploma (OND), usually with lesser UTME scores, the chance to pursue an official equivalent of the university degree after completing their OND.

Now that the HND route is over, will candidates with lower scores be kept from obtaining University degrees or the cut-off bar for admission to Universities be lowered to accommodate candidates with lower UTME scores?

However, the University of Ibadan announced that students with low marks in the last UTME and those who did not sit the last UTME could be admitted via its Open Distance e-Learning Centre. 

“They would be issued the same certificates as the university and be mobilised for the National Youth Service Corps like their colleagues who were admitted for the regular programmes of the university”, the Centre Director said. Only 21% of the 2022 UTME Candidates scored more than 200 marks of a total of 400 marks.

Sexual Harassment Cases

The plight of Nigerians pursuing degrees and diplomas in the country’s higher institutions goes beyond admission difficulties. 

When they eventually scale the hurdle of admissions and are not kept out of school by the industrial actions of their school’s academic and non-academic staff, they still learn amidst unrelenting sexual harassment from the institutions’ staff.