Nigeria: NIGERIA Senate orders review of universities admissions policy

Senate, the upper chamber of Nigeria’s legislative body, has directed the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board – JAMB – to extend the validity of university entrance exam results to three years, and to stop assigning students to institutions for which they have not applied.

Senators believe that holding – in a well-secured data bank – the results of would-be students who write the exam but do not fasten a place, would allow tertiary institutions to shop around for strong students and reduce the costs for candidates who sit the exam year next year.

About 1.4 million school-leavers sit annually for JAMB’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, or UTME, vying for some 650,000 places in 150 public and private universities.

There is critical concern in Nigeria about the ever-growing numbers of qualified school-leavers unable to access higher education.

The motion

Senator Joshua Lidani introduced a motion titled “JAMB’s New Admission Policy”, which rejected the unilateral posting by JAMB of students to tertiary institutions to which they did not apply.

There was an inherent problem regarding private universities, as a lot of parents could not afford the high fees they charged. In some cases, students were dispatched to universities far from their homes, placing an additional financial burden on their parents.

Lidani pointed out that JAMB was created by a 1989 Act to administer and supervise a central admission policy for universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, and he highlighted the importance of Section 5(1)(C) iii of the JAMB Act of 2004.

The clause spells out clearly some of JAMB’s key functions inclunding conducting entrance exams and placing qualified candidates in institutions – taking their preferences into account. “Their choice of where they think they could obtain a degree must be respected,” he said.

The senator revealed that at a recent conference the JAMB management board had come up with a new policy whereby some candidates selecting universities that had additional UTME applications than places, would be reassigned to other universities with fewer candidates.

“This is completely illegal and at variance with the essential clauses of the law creating JAMB. This illegality produced disturbing chain reactions in the minds of candidates and their parents,” Lidani insisted.

“The subsequent confusion was amplified by a directive that only candidates whose names were forwarded to universities by JAMB are eligible for post-UTME screening, and others would have to go back to the JAMB website to find out their new institutions. This is a complete mess. JAMB officials must be called to order.”

Lidani commended officials of the Ministry of Education for ordering JAMB to put an end to the new policy and apply rules enshrined in the laws that created it. “JAMB did not, strangely, heed the directive,” he said.

The Senate’s decisions

Senate took the following decisions:

• It directed JAMB to extend the validity of results to a maximum of three years, to allow tertiary institutions to ‘shop’ around for candidates of their choice.
• It ordered the board to instantly stop its policy of re-assigning candidates to institutions for which they had not applied.
• JAMB should urgently consult with parents, the Academic Staff Union of Universities and other stakeholders with a view to developing a friendlier, sustainable admissions policy.
• It directed Senate’s committee on education to enquire into circumstances surrounding the JAMB policy, inclunding allegations of favouritism, and to review the powers of JAMB vis-à-vis the law that gave birth to it.

JAMB Registrar Dibu Ojerinde countered that the Senate directive to extend the lifespan of the results of board exams would “obstruct the education evolution of students across the board”. JAMB would not implement it.

Ojerinde said he was not opposed to finding ways to reduce the burdens of the admissions system, but that the Senate recommendations were complex and difficult to implement.

“They should be exhaustively studied by all stakeholders to arrive at decisions that would improve and add price to the admission policy of JAMB,” he advised, and refused to be drawn on accusations of favouritism and other unethical activities levelled against JAMB.

A high-level official at JAMB, who did not want to be named, said: “We are ready to defend the credibility of our organ at proposed public hearings of Senate on all matters related to the admission policy.”

A provost’s view

Olu Akeusola, provost of the Michael Otedola College of Primary Education in Epe, argued that the current structure of JAMB was over-centralised and “ineffective”.

He believed that the three arms of Nigerian tertiary education – universities, polytechnics and colleges of education – should each have an autonomous agency conducting entrance exams. “This is the only way to resolve these admissions problems. JAMB in its present form cannot respond to the aspirations of our energetic youth.”

Akeusola maintained, however, that Senate’s decision to extend the validity of unused entrance exam results was an invitation to chaos. “It is like treating the effects without considering the causes.”