JAMB awards N710m to ABU, Kaduna Polytechnic, 4 others

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has awarded N710 million to six tertiary institutions during this year’s National Tertiary Admissions Performance Merit Award (NATAP-M).

Speaking on how the winners emerged, JAMB Registrar, Is-haq Oloyede, said the board judged the institutions by five criteria.

He said this in Abuja on Tuesday at the 2025 policy meeting on admissions into tertiary institutions and the 5th edition (2023 and 2024) of the National Tertiary Admissions Performance-Merit Award (NATAP-M).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that every year since 2018, JAMB had awarded prizes to tertiary institutions for compliance with its admission processes.

For the 2025 tertiary institutions’ award, the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, emerged as the overall winner with 14 points and was awarded N500 million.

The University of Ilorin emerged the Runner Up with nine points and was awarded N75 million.

Nile University of Nigeria, a private university in Abuja, emerged the Second Runner-up with six points and N25 million.

The winners were presented with dummy cheques during the award ceremony.

Oloyede said the criteria for selection included the institution with the highest number of candidates seeking admission from it and one that admits candidates from every state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Other criteria, he said, were the institutions that admitted not less than 1,500 candidates in total, and one with the fairest distribution of admitted candidates among its catchment states (all states in case of specialised military institutions).

Also, institutions with the highest number of admissions of foreign candidates, the most improved in gender balance and the most compliant with guidelines for admissions through the Central Admission Processing System (CAPS) were other criteria used.

The NATAP-M awards also have sectoral awards for Polytechnic, Colleges of Education and Innovation Enterprise Institutions (IEI).

Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna emerged the best polytechnic with an aggregate of 10 points and the Federal College of Education, Zaria the best College of Education, with an aggregate of 18 points, both receiving N50 million each.

Meanwhile, the PEFTI Film Institute, Lagos emerged as the best IEI, with an aggregate of four points, clinching a N10 million prize. (NAN)