The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), alongside key players in Nigeria’s tertiary education sector, has approved 150 as the minimum qualifying score for university admissions in 2025—an increase from last year’s 140 benchmark.
At the annual policy meeting held in Abuja on Tuesday, the stakeholders also endorsed 100 as the minimum for admission into polytechnics and colleges of education, while colleges of nursing will now require at least 140. The meeting saw votes cast by vice-chancellors, rectors, and provosts of tertiary institutions to finalise the benchmarks.
Despite efforts by JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, and Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, to push for a higher university benchmark of 160, a majority of institutional leaders resisted the move. In the end, 150 emerged as the consensus, though institutions are still allowed to set higher internal thresholds.
“The entire process was consultative,” said Prof. Oloyede. “But now that we’ve agreed, no institution can go below these national minimums.”
Among those advocating for higher cut-offs was Prof. Ayodeji Agboola, Vice-Chancellor of Olabisi Onabanjo University, who proposed 160, albeit with limited support. Meanwhile, vice-chancellors from newer private universities proposed lower thresholds—140 from Michael Lawrence University and 130 from Lighthouse University.
The new cut-off points, while modestly revised upward for universities, reflect a continued tension between inclusivity and standards in Nigeria’s overstretched higher education sector. More than 1.9 million students sat the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 2025, with intense pressure on institutions to admit larger cohorts amid constrained resources.
Beyond scores, the Federal Government used the meeting to reiterate a strict new policy: no tertiary admission will be allowed for students under 16 years of age.
“The minimum entry age for university admission is now officially pegged at 16 years,” said Education Minister Alausa in his address. “It was reduced from 18 to reflect developmental realities, but compliance is non-negotiable.”
Alausa warned that any admission conducted outside JAMB’s Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) or involving underage students would be deemed invalid.
“The debate on entry age has lingered for too long. The balance must be struck between academic readiness and cognitive maturity,” he said. “We will not tolerate falsified age records or backdoor admissions.”
Exceptions, he added, would only be granted in rare and justifiable cases, such as children who show exceptional academic ability or who have progressed through school at an accelerated rate. “But such cases must be documented, demonstrated, and justified,” he stressed.
With Nigeria’s tertiary institutions already facing mounting scrutiny over admission practices, the 2025 cycle is expected to test the system’s capacity to uphold both merit and reform. But as Tuesday’s meeting demonstrated, consensus remains fragile—and the politics of who gets in, and how, is far from settled.
