The public outrage that greeted last week’s restructuring of the admission process into higher institutions of learning by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is an indication that things are certainly not well with the way admission is being conducted. JAMB is the examination body saddled with the conduct of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to the institutions.
No doubt, the admission process into tertiary institutions, such as universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and monotechnics, require urgent fundamental change, but again, the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is’haq Oloyede, should not just offer the people such change like he did last week.
What Nigerians need currently, if Oloyede had really taken his time to address the problems of JAMB, is a transformation that will alleviate the sufferings of the candidates and their parents, as well as restore credibility to the examination, and not to compound the system in order to satisfy the whims and caprices of some people or institutions that want to feast on the situation.
At a time when Nigerians, especially students and parents who are at the receiving end of these self-serving innovations, are tired of JAMB and its antics in the guise of restructuring, the examination body failed absolutely to be mindful of what is really required to bring about the much-expected change.
In the process of restructuring the admission system, JAMB had announced that prospective candidates for the UTME would no longer be offered admission until they produce their Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) ‘O’ Level. Besides, the examination body did not only stop there as it fired another salvo, restricting the choice of candidates to only one public university, and or one private university, while it created the opportunity for a fourth choice.
On the face of it, JAMB has craftily paved the way for forced patronage of private universities, many of which are struggling to survive due to low patronage occasioned by the exorbitant fees charged by the institutions.
We make bold to say this position being championed, the restriction of candidates to a choice of one public university, is not acceptable to Nigerians, since it is not the responsibility and duty of the Board to dabble into such critical aspect of the students’ lives or determine the choice of institutions they must attend.
JAMB, as an admission umpire, should not, at the same time be an arbiter for private universities, as its action to stylishly enforce the choice of private universities on the candidates is suggestive that the leadership of the Board is only creating market for the private universities, which probably was done for a purpose or interest.
However, there is nothing wrong with the former structure, where candidates are entitled to two choices of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, rather than the new policy where JAMB announced that “… the admission platform has been restructured to allow only one choice of public university….
“Candidates for the 2017 UTME can now select the Nigerian Certificate in Education, NCE (college) or National Diploma, ND (Polytechnic/Monotechnic) as their first choice up to third choice and the fourth choice Innovative Enterprise Institutions (IEI), but can only pick a public university once.”
According to JAMB, the restriction of candidates to only one public university is to expand the opportunities available to candidates since almost all the public universities do not consider candidates on the second choice list as they hardly exhaust their first choice.
There is no doubt that with the new policy, JAMB has greatly goofed and there is the urgent need for the Board to retrace its steps by giving Nigerian students and their parents what they really deserve and desire in terms of acceptable admission policy since the one that has just been orchestrated by JAMB leadership apparently to satisfy private universities, is a disservice to the system and should not be allowed to sail through.
It is not as if Oloyede does not know what parents pass through in educating their children, but to have come out with such a policy does not speak well of his plan to do a yeoman’s job expected of him.
How many parents can afford to enrol their children in private universities in the country going by the high school fees charged in these institutions? And will this policy not deny many candidates the opportunity to acquire university education? These are some of the questions we expected Oloyede to have answered in his private sessions, before forcing the universities on the students.
No wonder that some stakeholders in their capacity are critical of the policy, which the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) condemned in its entirety. We also call on JAMB and its Registrar to re-examine the policy with a view to giving the country and its people what they deserve in terms of admission into higher institutions.
