The amendment to the JAMB Act 2021, which was sponsored by Tolulope Shadipe, a member of the House of Representatives from Oyo state, passed second reading last month, citing the financial burden the services of the board impose on parents and students as reasons for the amendment.
The legislation titled, ‘A bill for an Act to amend the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (Establishment, Etc.) Act, 2021, and other related matters,’ is also seeking to address the tenure of the registrar and membership of the board, among others.
In Nigeria, millions of candidates participate in the test yearly to be qualified to study in higher institutions of their choice. The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is usually taken at the end of Senior Secondary School.
For the UTME, its lifespan is for a year and can be re-seated, as many times as possible, if a candidate fails to secure admission during the first trial.
The issues cited by the lawmaker on why she was demanding for four-year validity for the result are obvious, as candidates are unable to gain admission even when they are duly qualified, due to issues of carrying capacity of the institutions.
Also on the amendment of the JAMB Act is the issue of age limit. The Senate Committee on Basic Education had moved to address the age limit in the Act to enable candidates who are below 16 years to participate in the exercise.
The debate seeking extension of UTME results is part of the numerous challenges facing the country’s education sector, with the ongoing industrial action in Nigerian public universities topping the list of critical issues calling for urgent action.
JAMB was set up in 1978 by the Federal Government to sanitise admission into the nation’s universities, Polytechnics, Monotechnics and Colleges of Education.
Before 1978, admission into higher institutions was conducted by each university, including the setting of admission requirements without recourse to any central or coordinating statutory body like JAMB.
It became coordinated when the board introduced Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), to serve as yardstick for admission into institutions.
Beyond the service of coordinating the acceptance of students into universities, colleges, polytechnics and monotonic, the board has also committed itself to remit billions into government coffers. The board, since Prof. Is-haq Oloyede took over as Registrar, has remitted over N20b into the government’s coffers.
Despite all of these, Shadipe argued that the bill, seeking to amend sections 5(1) (a) and 5(2) of the principal act, if passed into law, will allow the entrance examination to be valid for four years.
In her argument during the bill presentation, Shadipe maintained that the law setting up JAMB is exploiting students, as a pass does not guarantee admission.
She noted that most of the examinations into tertiary institutions in other countries generally last more than a year.
According to her: “When you look at the number of students that apply for university every year and the number that gets in, it is definitely not their fault. So, why should they be penalised? Everywhere in the world, no such exams are valid for one year; scholastic aptitude test (SAT) is valid forever,” she said.
She described it as “totally unfair,” the yearly sitting for UTME by candidates, as they are made to repeat it when they fail to secure admission.
“Why should our children be sacrificed on the altar of revenue generation?” she queried.
Shadipe noted that the bill, if adopted, would minimise the cost of running the examination and allow candidates plan, project and decide on which of the tertiary institutions to study.
It will also allow candidates determine what to study and where, after seeing their strengths and weaknesses, thus reducing logistics needed to conduct the examination.
“It will reduce uncertainties surrounding applications and admissions, and the number of applicants yearly without reducing the quality of the examination,” she added.
However, stakeholders, including academics, have reacted differently to the decision of lawmakers to seek an extension of validity for the UTME result.
A professor of Journalism and council member, World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC), Ralph Akinfeleye, lamented that the board has shifted its focus from being a regulator to a trader.
According to him, the examination body is now making profit at the expense of parents, and stressed the need for the agency to return to its primary role of being a regulator.
He called on the government to scrap the agency and allow each university to determine its mode of admitting students.
Akinfeleye, a former Head of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos (UNILAG) said: “JAMB should be scrapped and let it go back to where each university is allowed to conduct its own admission.”
Professor Adamu Tanko, of Bayero University Kano (BUK), also insisted that the board be scrapped.
Tanko noted that if the bill scales through, it would give rise to a backlog of students waiting for admission.
He said: “Let us do away with JAMB. We don’t need it. It is only in Nigeria that JAMB is useful. If you want to gain admission in Ghana or any other West African country, you don’t need JAMB.”
Commenting, a 400-level Anatomy student at Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Olabiran Oyinkansola, does not want the lawmakers to proceed with the amendment. She supports that the examination be held yearly.
Head of Department of Mass Communication at the University of Lagos, Prof. Adepoju Tejumaiye, faulted the proposal that UTME results should be valid for more than a year.
According to him, the extension of result validity is possible but not advisable.
He cited laziness, as one of the disadvantages an extended validity could bring to students.
Tejumaiye countered the argument that the board has been turned into an income generating agency, saying JAMB has continued to live up to its responsibilities, in terms of admission into higher institutions.”
He maintained that the one-year validity is sacrosanct because whatever performance a student records this year, whenever such a student is going to do it again, he would have improved on it.
He urged lawmakers to desist from tampering with the one-year validity of the entrance examination.
Similarly, Dr Adebola Bakare of the department of Political Science, University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), voted in support of the move by lawmakers to extend the validity of the entrance exam.
Bakare, who lamented the stress students pass through yearly to secure admission, suggested that the examination be scrapped to allow universities to determine how students will be admitted.
He said: “In my own opinion, I think we don’t need JAMB any longer. The best thing is for each university to organise its own entrance examination, which will give students the opportunity to apply to many universities at a time, so, at the end of the day, if one doesn’t work out, another will. After the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), many universities are still conducting post-UTME. Why are we now having duplication of entrance examination when students will write UTME and still write post-UTME?”
Bakare also faulted the board for being a revenue-making agency, remitting billions at the expense of poor masses to the government.
In his reaction, JAMB’s Head, Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, said the UTME, being a ranking examination, should not be allowed to be valid for more than a year, saying there is nowhere in the world where a ranking examination would stay for more than two or four years.”
He warned that accepting more than a year of validity for the entrance examination will promote disenfranchisement of candidates seeking admission in each academic year.
“What this means is that if you take the exam for 2023, you are not eligible to sit for 2024 and by implication, if you take the exam for 2023 and you scored 120 and couldn’t secure admission, you cannot take the exam until the extension validity ends. So there are a lot of things that would come to play.”
Benjamin noted that the candidates are the ones who will bear the brunt if the lawmakers successfully amend extension validity.
While dismissing the financial burden as basis for lawmakers’ call for validity extension, Benjamin rhetorically asked, “Of what benefit will the financial aspect mean to a candidate if he doesn’t get the required score and has to take the examination again?”
He clarified that the entrance examination was introduced to bring sanity into the system, urging the lawmakers to call for a public hearing on the matter to enable impartiality before its passage for presidential assent.
