40 per cent of students who come into varsity through JAMB can’t defend their scores
By TOYIN OSAWE
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

For whatever criticisms that might have trailed the post UME screening conducted by universities and which is recently being questioned by the house of reps, the results from the University of Lagos exercise would keep the skeptics eating crow.

The results of students, who sat for the test at the University of Lagos, have been released and the general performance would keep the protagonists of the test singing a song of vindication. While a significant proportion of the results were below expectation with many having low scores, and compared with their JAMB scores, many also had a wide gap that would raise questions.

According to the vice-chancellor of the institution, Professor Ayo Ibidapo Obe, the performance can be said to be inversely proportional, as the high scorers in JAMB did not turn out as the high performers in the test.

In this chat with Daily Sun, he gave a cursory analysis of the general performance from the tests and also commented on the various controversies that have trailed the Post-UME screening.
Jamb Scores Versus Unilag Test Scores (Lagscore)

I would say the performance was inversely, almost. This is because the high scorers in JAMB did not come out as high scorers in that test. For somebody who scored 303 in JAMB (out of 400) which translates to roughly 75 per cent now scored 28 per cent in the Unilag test.
Also someone who scored 220 and scored 48 per cent in the test implies that the percentage of his UME score is about 52 per cent. And compared to 48 per cent with a margin of errors, the performance is okay.

Thus the real people are those in this region which I would like to call the middle belt (not Middle Belt of Nigeria). These are students within that 210-250 band. This is my observation from my cursory analysis. And that was why we said the result should be on the internet, so that when the public sees it, they will be shocked and woken from their slumber.

There’s a need for us in this country to really look at the source of our problems. These are people who are going to be graduates, they are going to man the economy.
These were tests not drawn by professors but teachers in the secondary school. They were based on MOCK exams of WAEC and NECO. The academics here had nothing to do with it, so it was not an issue of the questions were difficult.

For me as a person and as a scientist, the exercise has been justified. In fact, we discussed (management) that we can use this for study. Let our colleagues in the field of Education and Sociology know the enormity of the problem on our hands, so that we know where the problems are coming from.
The problem of university education is not really in the university. What this post-UME screening is telling us is that what you have at your farm gate is what you have from the beginning unless you sift them from there. Now we’re doing the sifting, saying ‘you can come in or you may not’. And we’ve discovered that those who shouldn’t be coming in have been coming in based on the criteria we set for ourselves. Now we’re changing the filter for another. You pass through the UME filter, then the Unilag filter. Of course, those who should not pass through the filter may still do but in the course of the programme, hopefully they will ultimately be filtered out.

It’s just a rumour that if you don’t pass and you know people you will still get admission, that is not possible. I was not even available when I gave instructions that the results should be published on the internet. You cannot get in if you don’t satisfy our criteria, whoever you are, even if you are my son, you can’t!

Let me assure you that no one will get in through the back door, I want to be very firm on that. For instance, we heard that if you get 30 per cent in our Diploma, you can come in. I was wondering how that’s possible. Some people tried to forge the Diploma admission letters and we got them.
It’s not possible for anyone to get in without fulfilling the criteria because I would not allow it. I would check everything and anything that goes with my signature. I ensure that I check unless it won’t carry my signature. I will check the UME score and the test, in the category of merit, catchment, and ELDS. That categorisation, which the government established in JAMB will still be complied with. In that case you might see someone coming in based on catchment or ELDS (Educationally Less Developed States).
This test does not disturb JAMB. Perhaps, we are not communicating. We will still follow the criteria of 45 for merit, 35 for catchment and 20 for ELDS.

Provisions for 45,000 though our quota is 4,000 plus
The simple answer is access, everyone must be given access. When we discuss serious issues like these, people want to bring in reasons that are pedestrian.
We did this screening because we couldn’t continue with what they previously did. We can’t reproduce it and it has some level of bias.

Three people will see you and probably ask you the chemical composition of water. And maybe because you saw grey haired people, you stammer, then they’ll conclude that you should go away since you don’t know it. Oral interview itself has a problem. Suppose a man stammers and considering that there is a long list, would the interviewers wait for you? If it is something that will be written, it is better, though not the best.

Unlike other universities that asked only those above 180 or 200 to come for the test, we did not. We consider that approach a lazy man’s way of solving problems. What we did was to look at the performances over the years. Some have 220-230 (Law), Medicine (250) and the areas where we don’t get people like science, we get 200 (e.g. Computer Science is 240).
In all, about 26,000 paid for and sat for the exam, though we made provision for about 45,000.

The results …
The results are out and we will now take the two scores (UME and LAGSCORE) to JAMB and make our recommendations for admission. For you to be admitted you must be able to satisfy the two minimum requirements of both JAMB and LAGSCORE for your course.
For instance, a man who qualified through JAMB but scored 28 per cent in the test may not be considered for admission. And if the average score from the test is 38 per cent for Geography and the student has a corresponding score in JAMB it is most likely that such will make the admission. It is a systematic process, and if it is well computerised, then there’s no problem. How will you cheat anybody since all the results are published?

We intend to look at the case of people who performed well in our exam but not so well in JAMB, we may offer them other courses. It will depend on the average of the scores for that course. A student with a LAGSCORE of 10 will most likely not be considered for admission because the average would be more than 10. Even if he performs well in JAMB and has admission from the body, he may not be considered. That JAMB admission is not meritorious.

For instance, this person (pointing to the scores) scored 53 per cent in UME based on ELDS, the guy is from Kwara State but he performed well in the test. So why categorise them as ELDS when they have brains. Left to me it should be based purely on merit.
This other person scored 299 (merit) in UME but scored 15 in our test. Here is another one who scored 289 and 53 per cent in our test that’s a good candidate. We are just trying to do it right.

The House of Reps questioning
Fortunately I was a member of staff when JAMB was created. Even then there were controversies in terms of what should be the role of JAMB and so on and so forth. I remember Prof. Chike Obi who was the head at that time, was against the establishment of JAMB. When it was eventually established it was with the view to lessening the burden on the prospective university candidates. In our days, we had to apply to the individual universities and that put a toll on our parents and us. So it was a good thing that government, thought about centralising through JAMB apart from the fact that it gives a good grasp of data. We can have useful data as to how many Nigerians want to go to the university. We could use it to plan for provisions of better facilities. I’m sure that’s what led to the establishment of other universities like the Federal Universities of Technology and Agriculture, so also the licensed private universities and the National Open University.

The data was there to show that the demand for university education was high in the country. From that point of view it was a good creation and a useful instrument to ensure that we can properly achieve our objective of a very good nation.
I do not see any controversy. I feel perhaps, we have not been able to convey perfectly, what is happening in the universities to our stakeholders, and the general public. The situation became bad because of the pressure of the population of the students on the few facilities of the universities. In a large number of cases, the students were unable to be tested in ordinary comprehension. Everything that is done is done by objective.

That in itself creates many deficiencies for our graduates. At Unilag, we’re doing something about this, which is part of programme for entrepreneurship and good governance, also CURE (Centre for the Creative Use of English). We try to encourage our teachers to give the students assignments that will make them write in long hand. This became necessary because we saw that we were producing graduates who cannot express themselves on paper and orally in a cogent manner.
What we’re trying to do at Unilag is to assist the nation and of course the national assembly to get a better way. JAMB does a first level of screening and when the students now decide on the university of their choice, there will be a second level of screening. It’s a sifting process and how did we get here?
We know that quite a large number of candidates who come in through JAMB can’t defend their scores, about 40 per cent. When errors get to such big proportion then there’s a problem and you have to look at it and that’s what we’re trying to do.

JAMB will do the first screening while the universities will do the second one. When you start looking at things from a legal perspective, we need to ask who made that law. JAMB was established by decree but new information, new technology, new advancement says we must review those laws from time to time.
For us JAMB is okay, it’s the first level of the selection process, while the second level is with the universities. And the third level is when you are in the university and you start with all the tests till you graduate.

We screened the 2004 set
What does screening mean? In this university, we did it for the prospective 2004 candidates without being prompted. We did oral interview because we didn’t want to incur expenses. So we called them to our multi-purpose hall not asking for any fee. They were interviewed one by one by three people (two from the department and one from admissions office). We had videos and we saw terrible things. Of course, we couldn’t record everything, you can imagine the total costs.
I agree with the Honourable Minister that you must have a very good (objective) reason for rejecting the candidate. If I say that a candidate is rejected, the reason for that must be there for the records.