The National Universities Commission (NUC) says only 30 per cent of the 1.7 million candidates who wrote the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) are eligible admission.

Abubakar Rasheed, NUC Executive Secretary, disclosed this at a one-day public hearing on the regulatory conflict between Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and universities in offering admission in Nigeria.

The hearing was organised by Senate committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund on Tuesday.

He said the limited spaces in tertiary institutions had made admission crisis inevitable in the country.

“The crisis of admission in this country is inevitable. Unless we expand spaces, we shall continue to have admission crisis in this country,” he said.

“Every exam has its own problem. We believe JAMB exam is credible and all of us operating in the system respect the results of JAMB exam.”

Speaking at the hearing, Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB Registrar, said there was no conflict between JAMB and universities in respect of admission.

Oloyede explained that most of the candidates who sit for JAMB examination annually do not have the required qualifications to gain admission.

He said: “It is not true that we have 1.7 million candidates that are ready to go into the Nigerian university system.

“Of the 1.7 million that took the exam I can say conveniently that not more than 30 per cent of them are prepared for admission; they are just trying. They do not have the five O-level required to go into the university.

“Secondly, let me also let us realize that 10 per cent of the 1.7 million that we see or 1.9 as the case may be they are not what can be categorized as belonging to the net enrolment ratio for entering tertiary education. They belong to the gross enrolment ratio.

“Eighty per cent of candidates sitting at the point of sitting do not have the O-level at all. They are awaiting results. So when we are building our theories and analysis, we need to be very cautious.

“If you score 400 over 400, and you do not have the five O-level, you cannot come into the university. The basic qualification is the five O-level.”