“In 2024, we [Moniepoint] made a decision that we will no longer hire from any other place than Nigeria. And we chopped the cane in 2025… If you go to Moniepoint’s career website — which you can go and apply if you want to — we have probably maybe 500 vacancies or so. And we are struggling to find people to fill those roles. And here I am, looking for Nigerians that cannot meet the requirements that we need to meet to be able to compete and build world-class products… I blame our education system… I am honestly beginning to feel like we need to do something to prevent the general IQ of this country from going lower,” Moniepoint’s CEO, Tosin Eniolorunda, said at The Platform Nigeria summit on May 1, 2026.

“I used to feel Nigerians are really bright. We’ve had over 500 vacancies since 2024, and we’re still struggling to find Nigerians to fill those roles. They don’t meet global standards. I blame social media, yahoo and hook up culture..”

— Tosin Eniolorunda, Moniepoint CEO pic.twitter.com/hqxWhOZdd0

— UNCLE DEJI™️ (@DejiAdesogan) May 4, 2026

Less than two weeks later, on Monday, May 11, the Federal Government inadvertently responded to the lament of Eniolorunda and others who think Nigeria needs to raise its education standards, not lower them, by doubling down on 150/400 — last year’s standard — as the cut-off Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) mark for university admissions, and 100/400 for polytechnics. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) first alarmed education stakeholders in 2017 by adopting 120 (approximately 30%) as the UTME cut-off mark for university admissions, the lowest since the start of the university entrance examination. Since then, JAMB’s cut-off marks have hovered between 120 and 160, far from the 180 mark that was adopted for many years and represents 45% — a pass mark in nearly all universities in the country.

Besides the retention of the 150 and 100 marks for university and polytechnic admissions respectively, the Federal Government also waived the UTME requirement for Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) and agriculture programmes. But the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, was honest in confirming that these decisions had nothing to do with raising standards, and everything to do with expanding access to tertiary education, particularly in teacher education.

While the Federal Government should definitely be in the business of expanding access to education, standards should never be sacrificed on the altar of access and that is exactly what the government has done for more than a decade. Instead of patting candidates on the back and helping them gain admission to universities by scoring 37.5% — a score that would traditionally be considered below competitive university-entry standards — the government should be helping them get better by setting higher standards.

Although the Moniepoint CEO has received plenty of pushback for suggesting that Nigeria lacks enough talent to compete globally, and many of the criticisms are reasonable, no one has denied that the country’s education system is broken. And the answer to that is not lowering standards, which is exactly what the Federal Government has done here with UTME cut-off marks for universities and polytechnics.

The total mark is 400. So a score of 150 is 37.5%. That’s literally a fail. A score of 100 is 25%. Also a fail.

In a globally competitive world, this is all the signs of a falling standard of education. https://t.co/Zk1QAlXGpE

— Tola (@adetolaov) May 11, 2026

The answer is ensuring universal access to education, building top-class infrastructure in primary and secondary schools nationwide, reducing socioeconomic inequality, and most importantly, guaranteeing high-quality education for every student. Nigeria does not lack brilliant young people. What it lacks are the systems, culture, and commitment needed to help those talents grow and succeed. So, instead of lowering benchmarks, the best way for the federal and state governments to help young Nigerians is to improve their learning environment. Lowering standards for greater access assumes that students are the problem, but they are not; the ineffective systems around them are.

It’s important to remember that UTME was created to filter admissions into tertiary institutions and maintain a reasonable standard across board. But there is nothing reasonable in the current regime, which does not help anyone, including admission seekers who will need to justify their admission in university classes. The students admitted into universities on the back of a 37.5% score today are the teachers and civil servants of tomorrow. If the entry floor is this low, it is not just individual institutions that suffer, it is the quality of every public service and private sector output those graduates eventually touch. Every year the Federal Government normalises a lower bar instead of raising the quality of education available to students, it widens the gap between Nigeria and the countries it needs to compete with for investment, talent retention, and economic relevance.

The argument for access is not wrong in itself. But access without quality is just a more organised form of failure. What Nigeria needs is not more people entering broken institutions with lower scores, it is a government that invests seriously in fixing the pipeline: better-funded public secondary schools, qualified teachers in underserved states, and a UTME standard that actually means something. Until that happens, Eniolorunda’s frustration will keep finding new faces to attach itself to, and Nigeria will keep producing graduates the economy cannot use.