ASUU strike: No admission offer has been canceled, says JAMB

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says no admission offer has been or will be canceled due to the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

Fabian Benjamin, the board’s national spokesperson, confirmed this to TheCable Lifestyle on Wednesday evening.

He said Ishaq Oloyede, the JAMB registrar, spoke of the development while declaring open the national executive council (NEC) meeting of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) in Abuja.

ASUU went on strike for 10 months in 2020 during the COVID-19 outbreak and for another eight months in 2022.

The strike disrupted the academic calendar, creating an admission backlog that public varsities seek to whittle down.

Benjamin said JAMB has clarified that no offer of admission that it made to candidates who wrote its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) or pending admission session had been canceled or will be canceled.

“The registrar didn’t say no admission will be affected. He said none will be canceled,” the spokesperson clarified.

“The ASUU strike, whether directly or indirectly, affects everybody. We’re all casualties. People have siblings who are yet to return to school. Certainly, it will affect admission, but no admission session has been canceled.

“The plan is that institutions are going innovate and ensure all candidates are given a fair opportunity to compete.

“Yes, the slot may shrink in the sense that some of them have a backlog dating back to 2020 and 2021, and are meant to add candidates of 2022 to this existing backlog. The three years have been crammed into one year.

“If you have a carrying capacity of 10,000 [as a university], three years is 30,000. But as you’re taking those three years into one, you can’t do 30,000 at once. You can do 10,000 but pick from every exam that has been conducted.

“Hence, the point is that no admission session has been canceled, but opportunities will definitely shrink.”