On May 11th, JAMB announced new minimum cut-off scores for the 2026/2027 academic session: 150 for Universities and Colleges of Nursing, and 100 for Polytechnics, out of a maximum of 400. In practical terms, a candidate can now qualify for polytechnic admission with just 25 per cent of the total obtainable score.

But lowering the bar does not solve the problem. It only exposes how deep the problem has become.

JAMB’s cut-off marks have been sliding for years, from 180 between 2008 and 2017, down to 120, back up, then down again. Each drop reflects the same pressure: too many applicants, too few institutional spots, and mass failure rates that generate bad headlines. This year, of over 2.2 million registered candidates, only 0.5% scored above 300. But lowering the bar doesn’t explain those failures. It just stops asking why they happen.

That number should trigger a national conversation, not another downward adjustment of standards. The easy response is to blame students. The more honest response is to examine the system producing those students.

Part of the answer lies in the system feeding into JAMB. Nigeria’s public schools are marked by crumbling infrastructure, underpaid teachers, static curricula built on memorisation rather than reasoning, and chronic underfunding. A 2022 UNICEF report found 70% of Nigerian children cannot read with meaning or solve basic math problems. Students arrive at JAMB underprepared not because they are incapable, but because the system never equipped them. In some cases, the JAMB exam is the first time a candidate has ever used a computer.

Yet instead of confronting those foundational problems aggressively, the easier option has become lowering entry thresholds.

JAMB also made a separate questionable call: exempting Education and Agriculture (non-engineering) applicants from the exam entirely. Sending unevaluated candidates directly into teacher training pipelines only deepens the cycle of underqualification that is already hollowing out the profession.

Last year, JAMB was forced to acknowledge widespread technical glitches that suppressed hundreds of thousands of scores, after initially dismissing the complaints. The body’s response, a press release titled “Man Proposes, God Disposes,” said everything about its accountability culture.

Lower cut-offs do not produce better-prepared graduates. They produce more certificates, ones neither graduates nor employers fully trust. The fix is not access to a lower standard. It is investment in the foundation: teacher training, curriculum reform, school infrastructure, and an end to the ASUU strikes that have cost students years of academic time.

At some point, Nigeria must decide whether it wants to solve the education crisis or simply adjust the scoring system around it.

Lowering the threshold is not inclusion. It is the formalisation of failure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

NOTE: This article is a reworked and independently edited version adapted from a previously published article by another publication with the same author.