The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has insisted it does not give “preferential cut-off marks” to students who take the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, from the northern part of Nigeria.

Recall that Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State earlier called on the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, to stop giving “preferential scores” to students in Northern Nigeria.

Appearing on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’, the Governor said it was wrong for the students in the North who sit for the UTME to get preferential treatment.

El-Rufai said that all students in the country should get the same cut-off marks and that students in the North shouldn’t be given lower cut-off marks.

Reacting, the board’s Head of Information and Media, Fabian Benjamin, in a statement on Tuesday insisted that the exam body doesn’t give preferential cut-off marks for anybody.

“JAMB doesn’t give preferential cut-off marks to candidates. Candidates are only admitted according to the scores defined by institutions.

”The students sit for the UTME examination and it is what they obtain that is the basis for their selection after the policy meeting has authorised the commencement of admission.

“What people refer to as the cut-off mark is the minimum score and each institution sets its own minimum score; it is a function of performance in the UTME for the year, subscription to programmes and institutions .

”The determining factor is the subscription to a particular programme or school. If the subscription is very low, then it will affect the minimum score for the programme,” he said.