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JAMB
JAMB: Crisis of relevance
OBVIOUSLY
swayed by the pervading condemnation of its inability to conduct credible
matriculation examinations and the universities’ relentless solicitation for
greater participation in the process of admitting students into the
institutions, the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) has declared its
intention to, henceforth, subject its candidates to further tests. Under the
plan, successful candidates in the University Matriculation Examination (UME)
are to be further tested, through oral or written tests, by universities of
their choice. To qualify for university admission, therefore, each candidate
must pass both the UME and the additional test.
The grounds of JAMB’s decision are easily
ascertainable, though they hardly justify the action. In the face of the rapidly
and steadily increasing population of UME candidates and the intensifying
fraudulent examination practices over the years, the JAMB has appeared to be
irresistibly helpless and incapable of discharging satisfactorily its statutory
functions. From 1978, when the JAMB was established till date, the number of
universities for which it selected students has increased from 10 to 54,
including the latest approved Kaduna University, and will jump to 61, with the
imminent approval of seven more private universities.
Accordingly, the population of candidates
has increased from less than 200,000 about 15 years ago to more than one million
today. The burden of the JAMB is heightened by the widespread examination
malpractice that characterises the UME. It is of variegated forms -
impersonation of candidates; connivance with and fraudulent practices in
examination halls by invigilators; and fixing of examination scores by dishonest
JAMB officials. On this score, hundreds of thousands of UME results are
withheld, or cancelled yearly.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the
universities have consistently rejected as unreliable the high scores recorded
by candidates in the UME.
Moreso, on entering the university, a
number of high scorers in the UME have proved to be incapable of coping with the
rigours of academic work. At a stage, some of them are asked to change their
course of study or withdraw from the university, while the rest ended up as
career students.
The logic of the demand of the
universities to play larger role in the selection of students is that since they
train the students, the tertiary institutions should be much more involved in
the selection and that the universities are better equipped, than JAMB, to
conduct the relevant examination. The first part of the argument passes without
debate, but the second part of the claim is quite doubtful.
Examination malpractice is not restricted
to UME or examinations conducted by JAMB. It is prevalent in the universities,
where examination papers leak frequently, where lecturers award examination
marks for sex or fees, and where students smuggle answers into examinations
halls. Indeed, examination malpractice permeates the country’s entire
educational system.
The reality is that the high scores
fraudulently recorded by candidates in the UME are not solely or roundly
responsible for the injection of unqualified students into the universities.
Today’s university students are products of the collapsed school system, sunk in
examination malpractice and dearth of learning materials, teachers’ incessant
strikes and school shutdowns.
As well, the students are also part and
parcel of a violent and fraudulent electoral system, perpetrated by politicians
and some other parents who even buy examination scores for their children.
Much more fundamental, the JAMB’s plan to
allow the universities to further test UME successful candidates translates to
the board shifting, delegating or subletting its sole responsibility to another
body. Which is clearly illegal as our laws confer on JAMB the sole
responsibility of conducting qualifying examinations into the universities. Thus
the new arrangement would question the role JAMB has been entrusted to play on
the matter.
Even at that the universities cannot claim
to have risen beyond the ills for which they now want to take over the functions
of JAMB. Moreover, there are genuine fears that the universities may take
advantage of the new arrangement to favour their relatives and friends. Until
the relevant law is amended, or the JAMB scrapped, the universities may be
better advised to enhance, through JAMB, the process of admitting students.
Again, the universities’ consistent demand for increased input into the system
borders on the long debated university autonomy.
Even if the eventual granting of the autonomy finally
knocks JAMB out of existence, it may not wipe out examination malpractice and
guarantee high-quality university entrants. This is why the government should
think it necessary to introduce re-orientation programmes, to educate potential
students, their lecturers and parents on the futility and dangers of examination
fraud to educational institutions and larger society. Without the groundwork,
the policy may come to naught.
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