2027 UTME: Think Tank Demands JAMB Data on Admission, Access gaps

Folalumi Alaran in Abuja

A higher education policy think tank, iRead To Live Initiative, has called on the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board to publish comprehensive data on tertiary admissions and candidates’ performance ahead of the 2027 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

The group made the demand in its inaugural policy brief titled, “The Admissions Gap: Who Gets into Nigeria’s Tertiary Institutions, and Why It Matters,” released in August 2026.

It urged the new JAMB Registrar, Prof. Segun Aina, to make admissions and performance data available in an aggregated and anonymised format to enable policymakers, institutions and researchers to identify gaps in access to higher education.

According to the initiative, the data should be disaggregated by state, local government area, geopolitical zone, gender, subject and institution, with clear definitions and machine-readable tables.

The Executive Director of iRead To Live Initiative, Jacob Sule, said greater transparency in admissions data would help the country understand where barriers to tertiary education were concentrated.

Sule said, “JAMB already collects most of this information to administer registration and admissions, and publishing it responsibly would let government, universities, and independent researchers see where access gaps are concentrated.”

The think tank also called on JAMB to publish the evidence used to determine the collectively agreed UTME cut-off mark, saying Nigerians should be able to understand the basis for decisions affecting access to university education.

“The evidence behind that collective decision should be public,” the group said, adding that the information would provide a clearer picture of national priorities, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and non-STEM programmes.

The initiative further recommended that JAMB introduce an annual Admissions and Access Report after every admission cycle to reconcile applicant-level admission figures with approved institutional capacity.

It said this was necessary because existing JAMB datasets could present different interpretations of the same admission cycle.

“JAMB should publish this report after each admission cycle, reconciling applicant-level admission data with capacity-utilisation data and presenting consistent year-on-year tables, so the same cycle is not read two different ways depending on which JAMB dataset a reader consults,” the group said.

The policy brief noted that 1,009,736 of the 1,716,154 approved tertiary admission spaces were filled nationally in 2025, leaving 706,418 places unused.

It put the overall fill rate at 58.8 per cent, with universities recording a 74 per cent fill rate, compared with 34.3 per cent for polytechnics, colleges of education and other institutions.

The group argued that the figures suggested that Nigeria’s tertiary education challenge was not simply a shortage of admission spaces but also a mismatch between available spaces and candidates’ preferences, qualifications and ability to access institutions.

It said, “Nigeria’s tertiary institutions did not run out of room in 2025. Hundreds of thousands of approved seats went unused even as public conversation focused on candidates who could not gain a place at all.”

The initiative, however, cautioned that a full understanding of the problem would require JAMB to publish more detailed data, including score distributions and information on access to computer-based testing facilities.

It also urged the examination board to pilot and independently assess its Bring Your Own Device option before any national implementation.

According to the group, such a pilot should include independent penetration testing as well as publicly available standards covering devices, security and equity.

It said candidates without suitable personal devices must not be disadvantaged by any shift towards a BYOD model.

The think tank further called for expanded CBT access and readiness support across the six geopolitical zones, including a free and universally accessible preparation module.

“Completion of that module should never become a barrier to registration for candidates who cannot easily reach it,” it said.

The initiative said the recommendations were particularly important as Aina begins his tenure as JAMB Registrar and prepares the agency for the 2027 UTME cycle.

Aina, a professor of Computer Engineering, assumed office at the end of July 2026 following the completion of Prof. Is-haq Oloyede’s statutory tenure.

The group said the new leadership had an opportunity to deepen reforms in admissions and computer-based testing by making access and performance data more transparent.

In 2026, JAMB registered 2,243,816 candidates for the UTME, according to the policy brief, although the 2026 admission cycle had not been concluded at the time of its publication.

The initiative said the 2025 figures provided sufficient evidence for JAMB and other stakeholders to begin examining the structural factors responsible for unfilled admission spaces and unequal access to tertiary education.