Yobe state may have come under serious attacks by the Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram, in the last one decade; it is retaining more candidates seeking admission for tertiary education into its schools than any other state in the country, checks by BusinessDay show.
For every 100 candidate that sought admission into different tertiary schools within the state in 2018, more than 60 were granted admission to pursue their respective degree programmes. This places the state above any other state in the country.
The implication of this is that you stand better chance in the state than any other state in Nigeria to gain admission to study a first degree programme when you apply to write the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination.
Yobe state is one of the three northeast states ravaged by the activities of the Boko Haram jihadists with the most recent attack launched in Feb 2019 and claimed at least six military officers. A year earlier, the insurgents kidnapped 110 students of Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapchi, five died, and they released 104 with Leah Shaibu, one of the school girls, still in their custody.
Available data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on JAMB applications and admitted candidates in 2018 revealed that the admission board received a total of 15,536 applications from Yobe State in 2018, of which 9,338 candidates were admitted, bringing the percentage of admitted candidates to applications received in the state to 60.1 percent as against 33.3 percent for the country.
Although when compared to 2017, the rate reduced by 5 percentage points from 65.1 percent, more candidates were still interested to study in the state as its 2018 applications represents a 12.8 percent growth from 13,767 applications received by the admission board in 2017, that’s the biggest application leap in Nigeria.
The state was trailed by Bauchi state having recorded 11,845 admitted candidates in 2018 out of 24,902 applications received, representing 47.6 percent admission rate as against 53.5 percent in 2017. Adamawa state came third as it could only admit 10,055 candidates out of 2,223 that applied to state’s tertiary schools in 2018.
Conversely, Benue state overtook Akwa Ibom to become state with the least rate of admission in the review year. Benue could only admit 16,356 candidates out of 63,116 people that applied for the 2018 JAMB examination.
Delta state retained its position in 2018 with the second-least rate of admission, 22,879 got admitted in the state compared with 80,131 people that wished to study in the state’s tertiary schools.
Meanwhile, a total of number of 1.65 million candidates, representing a 4 percent decline from 2017, submitted their applications to JAMB across the country in 2018, but out of this number, only 549,763 were admitted.
OLUWASEGUN OLAKOYENIKAN
