Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has counselled the Nigerian Air Force College of Nursing Science (NAFCONS), Offa, Kwara, on the need to comply with the rules and regulations guiding the conduct of admissions in the country.
The registrar gave the advice when the leadership of NAFCONS paid him a courtesy visit to the Board’s Headquarters, Bwari, recently.
Oloyede, in his remarks, maintained that nursing was a very critical programme with special admission requirements but, owing to the provisions of the law, there must be a uniform admission regime for all candidates whether civilian or military.
In this regard, he said all candidates seeking admission to any tertiary institution in the country must first sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination or obtain Direct Entry forms, as the case may be.
He acknowledged the fact that the proprietors of the institutions were at the liberty to fix their particular admission parameters, but such entry requirements must be communicated to JAMB for enforcement and candidates to be picked must possess all those entry requirements stipulated by law such as the possession of O’level requirements and UTME scores, among others.
The JAMB boss also stressed the need to streamline nursing education as it was done in other climes, to make it viable and productive, adding that the partitioning of ND and HND programmes as had been done by the college and others was counter-productive.
He said, “Two years (ND) is grossly inadequate to make any meaningful impact in the academic life of a prospective nurse.”
He, therefore, urged similar institutions to take the practical component of the programme seriously as that was the edge that polytechnics and monotechnics had over other institutions. The registrar reminded tertiary institutions of the directive of the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, on illegal admissions, stressing that it was an act of sabotage to engage in such acts.
Oloyede directed the commandant to take advantage of the approval given by the minister for the condonement of undisclosed admissions conducted by the school in previous years and ensure that, going forward, no more admissions would be done illegally.
Earlier, the NAFCONS delegation, led by the commandant of the college, Wing Commander, Usman Bawa Yahaya, informed the management of the board of the reason for his visit, which he said was to familiarise himself with the admission regime of JAMB, while requesting certain considerations given the peculiarities of the college as a military institution.
Yahaya informed the registrar that the college was an autonomous body with the provision to admit two civilians per state out of their approved capacity of 90 candidates, while the military and paramilitary forces fill the remaining quota.
The commandant said the college had embraced the automated admissions platform of the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) adding that necessary machinery had been set in motion to kick-start the 2021 admission exercise on the platform.