By Adesegun Fatusi
My name is Adesegun Fatusi, and I am the Provost of the College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife.
The case of the Akor Oghenerukewve has just been brought to my notice.
To throw more light on her case, I will present the detailed facts here:
With a score of 320, her mark from UTME amounts to 80 per cent, (i.e. 320/400 x 100).
Her school cert results are: English A1 (=8 marks); Biology C4 (=5 marks); Chemistry B3 (=6 marks); Maths B3 (=6 marks); Physics C4 (=5 marks); Physics C4 (=5 marks); Further Maths B2 (=7marks), and Civic Educ A1 (=8 marks). That gives her 45 points, or 70.3 per cent (i.e. 44/64×100).
So her overall average – as OAU did a combination of 50 per cent mark from JAMB and 50 per cent mark from School Cert – is: (80+70.3)=75.15 per cent, (which we rounded up to 75.2 per cent).
With that mark, she ranks number 103 on the list of the students who took Medicine as first choice.
The total admission quota for Medicine in OAU is 100, and that includes UTME and Direct Entry.
Clearly, although Akor did well, her mark was NOT good enough to earn her admission on merit to read Medicine in Ife.
Her mark of 75.2 per cent is clearly below our cut-off mark, (which was initially 78 per cent, but we later reduced to 77.7 per cent). Between her mark of 75.2 per cent and 77.7 per cent, by the way, there were 56 other candidates, who scored higher than her, but did not make the cut-off.
For example, two people had 77.6 per cent, two other people had 77.5 per cent, four people had 77.4 per cent, etc.
Having presented the detailed facts about Akor’s case, let me also help the many young Nigerians, who may be accessing this site with more information on admission as I see a lot of misrepresentation, falsehood, and misunderstanding from the comments that various people had made on this case.
1. Admission into Nigerian universities are considered on three grounds based on the nationally specified criteria (which I think ought to be reviewed now, by the way):
A. Merit = 45 per cent. This covers all candidates from the country – and it is automatic admission once you meet the cut-off mark).
B. Catchment = 35 per cent; this refers to those in the states specified as catchment area for each university: for OAU, that is Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Osun and Ekiti.
C. Educationally disadvantaged states, ELDS – 20 per cent. This refers to all the 19 Northern states, and Ebonyi, Rivers and Bayelsa states.
So, someone from Delta such as Akor, with 75.2 per cent will not get admission into Medicine in OAU automatically, as she is only considered on merit criterion; and she does NOT meet the specified cut-off, but someone with the same mark from Kwara (which is in the North Central zone) may get automatic admission with the same mark based on the consideration of ELDS, if 75.2 per cent is the specified cut-off for ELDS for Medicine.
2. When a candidate chooses a highly competitive course like Medicine in a top-rated university like OAU, the competition is very intense. Believe it or not, many of the candidates that made our merit mark had an average of six A1s in school cert coupled with very high UTME mark (above 300). So, a candidate must carefully think over his choice of course and university.
For example, if Akor had chosen ANY other course as her first choice for OAU, she would have made the merit mark and gotten automatic admission, and she would have made the merit mark for Medicine on merit for most Nigerian universities too (but NOT OAU unfortunately).
3. Because of the high demand and competition for very limited spaces, the College of Health Sciences does not consider second choices as a general rule. OAU, for example, was only able to offer admission on UTME platform (Merit + Catchment + ELDS) to less than 3 per cent of her applicants for Medicine, and less than 2 per cent of her applicants for Nursing Science this year.
4. For cases like Akor where the candidadte has made a high mark but does not make the cut-off, what the candidate can sometimes do is to come to the university and try and see if he or she can be considered for other courses. A candidadte DOES NOT get considered automatically for a course she has not applied to in JAMB. A candidadte is ONLY automatically considered for the course he or she has applied for with respect to a particular university.
Unfortunately, Akor has left her case too late as all admission lists have been submitted for this year.
•Fatusi is Provost, OAU College of Health Sciences
