Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board

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The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) is Nigeria's official entrance examination board. The examinations being administered are available for most students who choose to apply to public universities. Most of these candidates must already have concluded their external examinations, administered either by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) or the Nigerian Examinations Council (NECO).

[edit] History

By 1974, there were seven Federal universities in the country. Every one of these exiting universities conducted its own concessional examination and admitted its students. However, this system of admission revealed serious limitations and quite often, waste of resources in the process of administering the concessional examination especially on the part of the candidates. The general untidiness in the uncoordinated system of admissions into universities and the attendant problems were sufficient cause for concern to the committee of vice chancellors.

These problems had assumed new dimension when by 1976, the then federal military government, under the leadership of General Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ, established six additional universities. Consequently, the government set up a national committee on university entrance under the chairmanship of Mr. M. S. Angulu.^[1]