Expdonaloaded News; Apt axing of JAMB new policy on admission

The apt and timely reaction of the Federal Government in overrul­ing the embarrassingly obnox­ious new policy of the Board of Joint Admissions and Matriculation (JAMB) is a great national relief; not only for the numerous students and their wards who are directly, negatively affected by the policy but by the entire nation.

The prompt action of Buhari is strange policy, following a briefing by the Federal Ministry of Education’s Permanent Sec­retary, Macjohn Nwaobiala, is salutary, manifesting the government’s responsive­ness to the general national outcry against the largely unwelcomed policy. In its wis­dom, or apparent lack of it, the Board of JAMB decided to bring out a policy to address a situation that may have become worrisome, whereby many students are unable to gain access to the universities of their first choice because the universities have surplus candidates seeking admis­sion to it beyond their carrying capacities and/or beyond their allotted capacity by the National Universities Commission (NUC).
In its effort to address this problem, JAMB brought out this new policy with effect from this admission year at its combined adopted policy meeting. The policy is to reallocate candidates who ap­ply to universities where there are already an overload of candidates for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation EXAMINATION (UTME) in those particular courses to other universities who have spaces for those courses and can therefore absorb those candidates. This policy amounted to solving a problem by creating a more difficult problem, what you may describe as prescribing beheading a patient with a headache as a panacea for his ailment.
The intention of JAMB is, admittedly, well-meaning but the outcome is un­wholesome, for a number of reasons, one of which has led to the outcry which first emerged from the University of Lagos. One, universities already have the list of candidates forwarded to them by JAMB and ordinarily should qualify to write the post-UTME screening exercise, a pre-req­uisite for gaining admission to the Uni­versities. However, as a result of JAMB’s new policy, candidates who did not apply for courses in a particular university will now be unilaterally reallocated to that uni­versity, with the effect that certain candi­dates who apply to the university and who may have met both JAMB’s and the uni­versity’s cut-off may/will not be admitted to the courses in their university of first choice. Additionally, candidates who did not initially apply to those programmes in the university and probably do not meet the institution’s /programme requirements may be inflicted on the university. For instance, a candidate who scored 270 to read, say Law, at the university of Lagos may not be admitted to that that university to read Law, while another student whose first choice may be to, say, Covenant Uni­versity or Benue State University and thus did not apply to the University of Lagos may be reassigned to that university.
More disturbingly is the material aspect of this policy. There will certainly be cir­cumstances in which students who apply to Federal Universities and meet the cut off scores to those universities will, in virtue of this new policy, may not gain admission to the Federal universities of their first choice but are assigned to states or private universities where the fees are definitely higher. In cases of students from impoverished background and who can­not afford the tuition and other fees of the states and private universities will, inexo­rably, and due to know error or failure on their part, be unable to access university education for that year or, indeed, for aye.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com...This is a clear case of injustice and ineq­uity with injurious implications for nu­merous candidates and their parents who may fall victim of this policy. On the other hand, there are students from financially solvent backgrounds who, prefer to study in private institutions for some other rea­sons other than pecuniary but who may be denied the opportunity as a result of this policy. Ordinarily, there will be little sym­pathy for candidates in this category but they have democratic rights to choose to study in high fee-paying institutions and should not be denied the right if they meet the admission requirements of the institu­tions of their first choice.
As a result of these implications and many others that space does not allow us to interrogate here, the decision of the Federal Government withholding the implementation of this policy and direct­ing candidates that have made the ‘official cut-off marks to proceed to write the post- UME examinations’ in their institutions of first choice and later screen for their sec­ond choice where expedient, is commend­able and greatly relieving. Obviously, this decision is an interim measure as this de­cision to stem the emerging crisis from the Board of JAMB’s policy does not solve the problem arising from the various dif­ficulties attending various kinds of ‘crisis of access’ to university education, one of which JAMB sought to address. The truth is that, for various reasons students would rather seek admission to some universities and their programmes rather than others. Some of these reasons may be the ad­judged standards and quality of delivery and therefore end-products of attending those universities. Other reasons may be the adjudged stability in the calendars of these universities.
Others, still, may be affordability in terms of costs of studying in certain universities. There is also the fact that, there is, osten­sibly, adjudged over-supply of accesses to university education based on the numerous universities available in Nigeria nowadays. Yet, there is still the problem of inadequacy of tertiary institutions (I think more of insuf­ficient spaces) for the teeming population of qualified candidates seeking admission into them.
As things stand today, with the undeniable need for massifying access to tertiary educa­tion, less than 40 per cent of students who write, and meet the cut-off marks of, JAMB are able to access any Nigerian university. Some available universities, especially the private ones, are over-prized, beyond the means and reaches of the children of the poor who are in the majority. These are wor­ries that the governments in Nigeria need to frontally address in a knowledge world and society where education (and man-power, human capacity building generally) is the principal instrument of development.