Beyond The Post-UTME Controversy

The resolution of the Senate last week to investigate the continued relevance of the post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) screening in Nigerian universities triggered a laughable controversy.

At the last count, parties in the controversy included the Committee of Vice-Chancellors, the National Universities Commission (NUC), apologists of the senate and some “Jambites” who staged public protest in Lagos. Meanwhile, the Education Minster has also joined with a view to facilitating a truce.

The whole drama started with a motion by Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, representing Bayelsa West Senatorial District, that the Post-UTME screening by universities should be scrapped. His reason was that Post-UTME has no constitutional basis.

Senator Lokpobiri also cited cases of financial exploitation under the Post-UTME scheme, a point the admission seekers who staged the protest in Lagos also alleged among other very worrisome developments surrounding the desire to gain admission into public universities in Nigeria.

Interesting as the positions of the contending parties may sound, the controversy provides Nigeria with a very good opportunity to once again set things right in the admission procedure of our universities. Indeed, it is an opportunity to invoke international best practices even in this sector.

For too long, the average Nigerian has endured a frustrating admission process with courage. A situation where a candidate is made to take two examinations to get one admission cannot be right. Worse still, is the extra financial burden it puts on parents. This should no longer be allowed to continue.

Also worrisome is the spate of alleged impropriety in the handling of the process both by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the various universities who apparently also hope to generate revenue from the process. Sadly, none truly adds to standards in the institutions.

Indeed, it has become almost impossible to ignore allegations that candidates now buy admissions. If this is true, what is the controversy over who should admit candidates?

There is need for the country to re-visit the reasons that necessitated the Post-UTME system. We should also go back to what made the establishment of JAMB imperative before the next step is taken. Clearly, those reasons hardly exist anymore especially with the establishment of many private universities.

Today, if the country decides to abolish Post-UTME and JAMB examinations, nothing will go bad. Of course, JAMB is only a relic of over concentration of things in this country. Nigeria cannot continue to re-enact the unitary system of government in every sphere when it is not what the constitution says.

In all the civilised democracies, schools reserve the right to admit the quality and number of students they need. Such institutions have admitted students with an eye on research and competition to continue to attract the best brains in both teaching staff and students.

Nigeria should also move on and allow academics to do their thing and not make a political establishment to decide who an institution should admit. It even amounts to waste of time and resources for one institution to declare a candidate admitted and for another to re-examine.

Beyond this error in the system, we think that stakeholders in the education sector should be united in seeking and sustaining befitting standards in the system. One thing that cannot be missed in the whole episode is the apparent fear of many candidates to face examinations because they are ill-equipped for these examinations. They also do terrible things to compromise the examining bodies.

With the huge poverty profile in the country, made worse by a culture of corruption, there is very little the examiners can do to be upright. But if universities are allowed to admit their own students, it will be the problem and its perpetrators.

Governments across the country should be worried over the quality of people that come out of primary and post-primary schools. It is clear that the foundation is wrong, and the tertiary area cannot show much. The failure rate at the senior secondary school level in the last two years should give the authorities grave cause for worry rather than fighting over admission process.