Kudos for JAMB, by academics
By TOYIN OSAWE
Tuesday, May 2, 2006

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) came to be, as a child of necessity, conducting the Universities

Matriculation Examination (UME) into the nation’s universities in 1978. No doubt the body has been serving the purpose over the years, but like every good intention gone awry, it became the sad tale of Nigerian tertiary education that every one wished away.

The exam and the board conducting it had become riddled with malpractice to the point of becoming a joke.
Last year, the board endured its most trying period as the Federal Government gave a ‘go-ahead’ for the universities to conduct their own post-UME screening after so much condemnation. However, going by the conduct of the last UME on April 22, it appears the board has gone through fire and has become more refined as many academics who monitored the exam nationwide had something positive to say.

This year’s conduct revealed that the board became proactive in beating ‘the cheaters’ at their own game. Prior to the exam, the board blacklisted towns notorious for malpractice and did not hold the exam in such places. Also, some applicants found themselves being sent to other centres at a very short notice because the board got security report concerning their initial centres.

While visiting one of such centres, Ransome Kuti Memorial Secondary School, Agege Motor Road, Lagos, during the monitoring, Prof. Ahmed Bello Salim, said visiting such a cancelled centre was necessary to ensure that the exam did not hold.

"We had to visit the school just to ensure that they don’t go ahead with the exam. We got information that a syndicate here in Mushin in conjunction with the National Teachers Institute (NTI) had planned to indulge in malpractice, so we just dispersed the candidates to different centres. They came here this morning to discover that the exam would not hold here".

JAMB was also able to spring the same surprise in Bauchi State. Two previously designated exam centres were emptied and dispersed to other centres just to foil the plans of exam malpractice perpetrators.

On the JAMB monitoring trip that made unscheduled visits at various schools in Lagos, were eagle-eyed security operatives who were able to nab two candidates, Ayo Adeniyi and Ismaila Maiyegun at the New Era Junior High School, Surulere, Lagos.

And for schools that might have had sinister motives, such plans were botched. For instance, Western College, Onitiri, Yaba had about 90 students in a class, which exceeds the recommended 30 per class. This class had to split when the JAMB monitoring team consisting of the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Salim, Prof. Ignatius Uvah, Director Research and Statistics of the National Universities Commission, Hon Dayo Ogunniyi, member, House of Representatives and other top officials of the board arrived.
Besides the little operational hitches, the exam was generally given kudos nationwide by academics and other stakeholders who monitored it. They expressed their satisfaction mainly with the security arrangement.

According to the Vice-Chancellor of Kano University of Technology, (KUT), Prof. Ibrahim Diso, who monitored the exam in the Kano metropolis, the conduct of the exam was very satisfactory.
"The examination started on schedule and ended on time. There was no case of exam malpractice in the schools I visited. The security arrangement put in place by JAMB was okay"

In a similar vein, Prof. Chris Ikporukpo, the vice-chancellor of Niger Delta State University commended the exam generally, saying it was peaceful but implored the supervisors to improve on their work.
The duo of Prof. Shuaib Oba Abdulrahman, former vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin and the Rector of Micheal Okpala College of Agriculture, Dr. Anderson Amadioka while giving the conduct of the exam a pass mark, however, noted that there was shortage of materials in certain areas in their respective domains of Ilorin and Okigwe.

According to them, JAMB officials later sorted it out.
Senator James Manager, who is the brain behind the current bill on exam malpractice before the National Assembly, commended the security arrangement in the Warri area where he monitored the exam. He, however, noted that many candidates prefer to go to the rural areas, thus the need for more policing in such places.

Given these kudos on JAMB, one only hopes that the result of this outing will translate to results that can be verified in the long run and hopefully the board will be able to redeem its battered image.