JAMB set to honour 5 tertiary institutions at maiden award ceremony

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it has concluded arrangements for the presentation of awards to five tertiary institutions at its maiden edition of the 2018 National Tertiary Admissions Performance Merit Award (NATAP-M).

The board’s Head, Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, made the disclosure to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Lagos.

According to Benjamin, the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, would be doing the presentation on Thursday in Abuja. The JAMB’s spokesman noted that the award was in recognition of the institutions’ compliance to admission guidelines.

“We want to honour these institutions for doing what is expected of them in the past years, in terms of admission performance.

“Again, we looked at the most subscribed, the number of foreigners admitted, gender balancing and national spread.

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“You know some tertiary institutions will like to localise their admission by narrowing it down to candidates from their locality,” Benjamin told NAN.

“All such practice does not give our institutions the deserved exposure and competition as obtained in institutions in other climes. “This is also partly the reason such institutions cannot attract foreign scholars. “It is also the reason why most of them find it difficult to break through in terms of global ranking, aside research and other considerations.

“We want to encourage our institutions to be having global out look and we believe that with this kind of awards, things will change for good.”

He said that expected at the award ceremonies were Pro Chancellors, Vice-Chancellors of Universities, as well as Provosts of Colleges of Education and Rectors of Polytechnics.