THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) came into being in 1978 with a clear mandate to conduct Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) for admission into the nation’s few federal universities then. It was also charged with Direct Entry admissions into the universities. Prior to the advent of JAMB, individual universities conduct their matriculation examinations and admit their Direct Entry candidates as well.

Getting admission into Nigerian university then was a herculean task. It was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one to gain admission in Nigerian university. The situation led  many Nigerian students to seek admission in European, American and Asian universities. Later, JAMB’s service was extended to state and private universities.

In recent times, JAMB conducts the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for almost all tertiary institutions in the country. These institutions include public universities, private universities, colleges of education, mono and polytechnics and Innovative Enterprise Institutions (IEIs). No doubt, JAMB was introduced to cure the ills associated with admissions by individual universities.

These include corruption of the admission process and multiple admissions of some candidates. In fairness to JAMB, it did its possible best to live by it set objectives. But over time, it appears that the ills that JAMB was set up to cure have started to afflict it. Admission racketeering, favouritism and examination fraud top the list of accusations against the examination body. It was these corrupt tendencies that led to the Post-UTME tests, which also became a conduit pipe of corruption and avenue for universities to increase their dwindling internally generated revenue (IGR) instead of being quality control assessment of prospective university students.

Because the universities still want to have a role in the admission process which JAMB has literally usurped, the Post-UTME test was renamed Post-UTME interview with the revenue side of the bargain significantly reduced.  Despite sundry measures by different heads of the examination body to rid it of myriad shortcomings, it appears that JAMB is yet to get its acts right. From paper and pencil test, JAMB has graduated to Computer-Based Test (CBT). The CBT has its own problems too. But its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages.

Apart from long distant venues for the examination, special or miracle centres, and unholy hour schedules of the examination, wrong results and malfunctioning computer systems, the results are out within hours after the examinations.

Because of the peculiar Nigerian situation, some people have suggested for a three-year validity period for UTME results. That too, is neither here nor there. Last year admission witnessed assigning of different scores for WAEC and NECO results in addition to UTME scores of candidates.  Another Tower of the Babel? Only God knows where all this has taken JAMB and the UTME candidates. Now the latest innovation from JAMB is the reported banning of WAEC and NECO awaiting results candidates from the 2017 UTME test. In other words, all students in Senior Secondary School (SSS3) class will not participate in this year’s UTME test if JAMB is allowed to have its way. The examination body’s reason for this unpalatable decision is that in the past, “many institutions have admitted candidates on merit only for them to discover that such candidates do not have qualified O-Level results or the right combination for admission. This, JAMB says, would warrant deleting of such candidate and start the admission process all over again.

These candidates, by JAMB’s reckoning “would have denied other qualified candidates the opportunities for admission.” JAMB should explain more to Nigerians what it actually means. Its current code-mixing and even code-switching over the fate of awaiting results candidates is unclear. If JAMB is emphatically saying that awaiting results candidates should not sit for the 2017 UTME test, I think that it missed the point. Its reason that such bright candidates who fail to make it in WAEC or NECO deny other candidates their admission spaces is untrue. University admission, whether by individual institutions or JAMB, is usually done in batches: first, second and even third as the case may be.

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If candidate ‘A’ could not take up his admission because he could not provide qualified O-level results, his place should be given to another candidate below him until admission is over. What JAMB has failed to tell us is that there are many awaiting results candidates that made both O-level and UTME at the same time.

These bright candidates, and they are many, should not be denied the opportunity to sit for UTME because of JAMB’s ill-advised policy. JAMB should stop the avoidable speaking in tongues and allow every prospective candidate,  whether awaiting results or those with qualified O-Level results,  to partake in the competitive test.

The Federal Government should not allow JAMB to deny prospective university students the opportunity to write this year’s UTME simply because they are awaiting results candidates. In fact, JAMB has no right to do so. Another bad aspect of this novel JAMB policy is making it mandatory for candidates that made public university their first choice to make their remaining three choices from a college, a private university, a polytechnic and IETS.

The restriction on choice of universities and other institutions of higher learning is unnecessary. This imposition is unwarranted. I strongly believe that UTME candidates should be allowed to make their choices even if it means choosing from only public universities or private universities.

Education,  no matter the level,  is about having the right to make choices and the institution a candidate wants to attend. Of what use is College of Education to a candidate that wants to read medicine or mechanical engineering?

There is no point forcing a candidate to make a choice he does not like because it is what JAMB wants. Must a candidate be forced to choose a private university when his parents do not have the wherewithal to pay for their high tuition fees? JAMB should be democratic in its admission policy. University education in Nigeria should be democratized and the admission process simplified. The current JAMB posturing on UTME is apparently complicating the entire admission process and should be jettisoned.

Going to public university, private university, college of education, mono or polytechnic and Innovative Enterprise Institutions (IEIs) should be by personal choice and not by official coercion or imposition or both as the current JAMB leadership wants to do. Instead of barring awaiting results candidates from sitting for UTME, JAMB should consult WAEC and NECO and other qualifying examination bodies to have a flexible time-table that will suit all of them so that all qualifying examination results will be out before JAMB commences its admission exercise.

JAMB does not lose anything by allowing all candidates, both qualified and awaiting results, to sit for the examination. Things cannot be changed simply for the sake of change. This new JAMB policy should be discarded.