[FACT CHECK] Has the cut off mark for 2021 into Unity Colleges in Nigeria been released?

Claim: Websites claim that the national cut off marks for admission into unity colleges is 142.

Conclusion: No cut off marks have been pegged at the moment. Though, different states have different cut off as shown in the message, the cut off for 2021 has not been released.

Source: The message which was forwarded many times on WhatsApp has a website, Servantboy, linked to it. Putting the keywords into search engines, other websites like schooloings.org and caterandmerger.com also published similar stories.

Unity colleges are federal government-established secondary schools created to foster unity across different ethnic groups in the country. There are currently 103 such schools spread across all the states of the federation.

To gain entrance into the unity school, individuals must have completed a primary school education and have taken a National Common Entrance examination conducted by the National Examination Council (NECO).

The examination board, also known to conduct examinations for both Junior and secondary school students to certify their knowledge in the level just completed, conducted a National Common entrance examination on June 5.

In respect to the examination conducted recently, these website published a story claiming the national cut off marks was pegged at 142 while announcing the highest scores.

Verification:
The NECO website only shows the data of registration with respect to states and gender.

With 417 centres, the national common entrance examination took place on June 5, 2021 for 76,855 students where 37, 300 were males and 39,555 were females.

Lagos topped the list with the highest candidates with 21,423, followed by FCT with 8,674 and Anambra came next with 5,730 candidates.

There was no information regarding cut off marks on the website.

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When contacted, Azeez Sani, NECO head of Information debunked the story and said marking has just been concluded. He also highlighted the process involved after marking before the cut off can be announced.

He said after marking, the result will be presented to the ministry of education who will in turn make the pronouncements on cut off.

The ministry of education website was also visited and it revealed that 2021 cut off marks have not been pegged.

Azeez Sani added that students will have to download their results from th NECO website.

Although it is true that each state has its own cut off marks, the cutoff marks for 2021 have not been set.

Verdict: Misleading

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