Prof. Ruquayat Rufa'i -
Minister of Education
: by
What’s the point in conducting post
Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination by universities all over
Nigeria particularly private ones when candidates’ good performance in
that exam does not really guarantee anything? After all, what
universities do with post UTME results is subject to the dictates of the
Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.
Why do universities make both parents
and admission seekers go through unnecessary hardship when they know
that JAMB has the final say on who is admitted to the university at the
end of the day?
Parents and guardians of admission
seekers spend extra money every year on air and road travels in their
bid to take their children and wards to venues of their post UTME. Apart
from the huge costs involved, some die in accidents. Some parents and
children were reportedly some of the victims of the last plane crash in
the country.
This year again parents came from as
far as Abuja to Lagos, Iwo and other parts of the country accompanying
their children who were writing their post UTME.
I can recall some of the reasons adduced
for post UTME by universities a few years back. One of them is to
ensure that universities admit quality students. According to them,
candidates offered admission by JAMB often ended up being below
standard. The idea was to be able to sift candidates selected by JAMB to
ensure they are up to standard,
While universities’ decision to sift
their candidates might not be a bad idea, the universities were silent
on what happens when they adjudge candidates to be good for admission
and JAMB thinks otherwise. This has remained the crux of the matter.
As a mother whose daughter sought
university admission this year, I had cause to take my child to
different universities for her post-UTME. At that time JAMB had not
released its cut-off mark for university admission. The question parents
kept on asking university authorities at the parents’ forums was what
happened if their children did well in the university exams and failed
to meet JAMB’s cut off mark. The universities had no answer.
It turned out that many candidates did
well in the post UTME but scored below JAMB’s cut-off mark. For
instance, Babcock University asked candidates whose names appeared on
its admission list but failed to meet JAMB’s requirement not to bother
paying the university’s acceptance fee.
If JAMB is still this relevant, why
subject admission seekers to unnecessary stress? Why does JAMB have to
wait for weeks before releasing its cut-off marks? If JAMB could
release UTME results within one week of writing the exam, why should it
wait for another six weeks before declaring its cut-off marks? Why allow
parents to spend thousands of Naira to obtain admission forms to
private universities or pay for different post-UTMEs, wasting money on
needless trips before releasing the cut-off marks?
Though I don’t really subscribe to
fixing a cut-off for admission, fixing 180 for university admission
would have been okay by me if there are no question marks on either the
integrity of JAMB as an exam body or on UTME as a whole. There were
reports of cheatings and other forms of exam malpractices in this exam
which unfortunately cannot just be swept aside.
Whether JAMB likes it or not, the
ministry of education would still have to work something out to resolve
the issue of admission into Nigeria’s universities. With public
universities over-stretched and multitudes of admission seekers out
there, government needs to take a more pragmatic measure to solve the
gigantic problem in the education sector. Every year over one million
people seek admission to higher institutions in Nigeria. The figure
keeps increasing every year. But the entire system could only absorb
500,000 according to the minister of education, Prof. Ruqayyat Rufai. A
country in a situation like this needs to work on maximising its
capacity to absorb as many students as possible.
But that is not happening now. The
situation now is that some universities, especially private
universities, have spaces that are yet to be filled. There are
candidates that meet such universities’ admission criteria, but
universities’ hands are tied by government regulation.
Let’s face it, while public universities
usually have more than enough candidates to admit, thus always
exceeding their carrying capacity, private universities will continue to
have spaces because it costs money to study there. Tuition in private
universities range from N650, 000 to N2m per session depending on the
course of study. A large number of Nigerians cannot afford this.
Instead of piling up the list of
admission seekers every year, I think government should allow those that
can afford private university education and who are qualified by these
universities’ standard to proceed to the university. This will not only
decongest the list of admission seekers, it will also reduce capital
flight.
There was a report that Nigerians spend
N160bn annually in two Ghanaian universities. Ironically, Ghana and
other countries admit the same candidates that are rejected in Nigeria
because of unnecessary government regulations. Universities in other
parts of the world won’t need JAMB’s permission to admit candidates.
Instead of allowing parents to keep on taking their money out of the
country to receive sometimes half-baked education, government could
review its law.
Right now, some parents are in agony.
For some of them, their children scored between 170 and 179. They have
the money to pay in private universities and would have loved their
children to remain in Nigeria for at least their first degree
programmes, but they are being denied of that chance. This shouldn’t be.
After all, the autonomy of Nigerian
universities is claimed to be backed by law. If that is the case,
institutions should be able to establish their own programmes of study
recruit their own students and have some levels of control. True
autonomy connotes organisations having the freedom or freewill to set
their own rules and regulations without interference and control from
outside especially from government.
Agreed universities must operate under
the law of the land because autonomy doesn’t just give the right to do
anything at any point in time, universities should still have the
freedom to set and maintain their own academic standards just like the
foreign universities do.
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