The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that it will hold its 2026 Policy Meeting on Monday, where key decisions on admissions into tertiary institutions across Nigeria will be considered, including the approval of minimum cut-off marks for the 2026 admission exercise.
In a statement on Sunday by its Public Communications Advisor, Fabian Benjamin, the Board said the meeting will be chaired by the Minister of Education and will bring together stakeholders across the education sector to determine ‘guidelines for the 2026 admission exercise into all tertiary institutions in Nigeria’.
According to the statement, the session will also review and adopt admission benchmarks, including what it described as ‘the determination of the minimum tolerable scores for admissions’, which traditionally guide entry requirements into universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.
The Board also disclosed that the 2026 Policy Meeting will host a delegation from Sierra Leone, including the country’s Deputy Minister of Education, Mr Sarjoh Aziz Kamara, alongside two vice-chancellors — Prof. Edwin Momoh of Ernest Bai Koroma University of Science and Technology and Prof. Bashiru Koroma of Njala University.
The Sierra Leonean officials, the statement explained, are in Nigeria to ‘understudy the nation’s centralised admission system’ as their country considers establishing a similar body to streamline its own tertiary admissions process.
They were earlier taken through JAMB’s examination and admission procedures at its headquarters in Bwari.
During the policy meeting, the delegation is also expected to observe how stakeholders are integrated into Nigeria’s admission process, which the Board described as a coordinated value chain involving multiple actors.
The visiting team reportedly expressed appreciation to JAMB, noting that rising admission demand in Sierra Leone has created serious challenges, while the Nigerian model ‘offers practical solutions to issues they had long sought to address’.
Reaffirming the Board’s role, the statement added a note on its relevance in the education system, suggesting that the admission structure it oversees remains central to tertiary placement in Nigeria and warning that critics of its existence ‘may better appreciate its strategic importance’, in a scenario without it.
