Get Guardian on GoogleAcross the world, tertiary institutions are highly respected for their vital roles in society’s advancement. They lead human capital development; research, innovation, and knowledge generation; civic engagement; the advancement of democracy; and social transformation, among other roles. For institutions tasked with driving such high levels of transformation in society, nothing is more unsettling than the odious revelation that some engage in vices as grim as illegally admitting students and borrowing lecturers, equipment, laboratories, and other facilities to deceive accreditation teams in the country.
The recent allegation by the Federal Government that the affected institutions illegally admitted more than 258,000 students points not only to lax regulatory oversight in the Nigerian university system but also to sustained efforts to abuse established statutory channels, especially the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS) managed by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). By creating illegal admission channels outside the official portals meant for the function, tertiary institutions are deliberately circumventing national cut-off marks, merit principles, and government-approved carrying capacities. This is worrisome and unacceptable.
At the inauguration of the Committee on Strengthening the Accreditation and Quality Assurance System for Tertiary Institutions, where these issues came to light, a further reflection of the sheer magnitude of rot in the university system emerged when the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced that the government had moved to overhaul the accreditation system for universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education to prevent institutions from creating a “temporary picture” of their capacity whenever accreditation teams visit. The Minister warned against tertiary institutions borrowing lecturers, equipment, laboratories, and other facilities to deceive accreditation teams. He said that, henceforth, institutions must be assessed based on the resources they genuinely own and can sustainably provide to students.
From empirical findings, the admission fraud that is going on in tertiary institutions is not a one-off issue, but one that has been carefully nurtured and grown over the years. Alausa specifically said that 58,000 students were illegally admitted into colleges of education, while his estimate put the number of illegal admissions in universities at not less than 200,000. He cited the case of one institution where 8,593 students were legally admitted, while 9,872 were illegally admitted, meaning that the number of illegal students exceeded those admitted through the approved process.
In July 2023, the data for admissions conducted for the 2022/2023 session in universities, polytechnics and sundry tertiary institutions indicated that 88 institutions admitted students outside of CAPS. When it introduced CAPS in 2017 to centralise and automate admission processes between candidates and their tertiary institution of choice, JAMB was quick to warn that admissions conducted outside CAPS are illegal, null and void.
In April 2024, the board declared that it would no longer condone illegal admissions conducted outside of CAPS. But it is difficult to adequately pinpoint sanctions meted out to culprits, given the growing number of culprits. Last year, JAMB again cautioned tertiary institutions against persuading or coercing candidates to change their preferred programmes through internal portals, describing the practice as unethical and manipulative.
In a statement issued by the immediate past registrar, Prof. Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, which was signed by the Head of Media, Dr Fabian Benjamin, the board disclosed that some institutions had been using their internal admission platforms to pressure top-ranking candidates, especially those highly placed on the CAPS, to switch to less competitive courses. According to JAMB, such manoeuvres are intended to create space for preferred candidates, thereby undermining the merit-based admission process.
It is important to point out that when institutions create a “temporary picture” of their capacity whenever accreditation teams visit, they succeed in committing a serious crime because accreditation must depict an institution’s genuine, permanent, and sustainable capacity year-round, as against a decoy meant to deceive evaluation teams.
In the same vein, admitting thousands of illegal students way beyond the official quotas not only stretches already inadequate campus infrastructure, including laboratories and lecture halls, but also makes nonsense of the staff-to-student ratios, and consequently erodes the quality of degrees awarded by these institutions. This institutional impunity also willy-nilly affects students, with thousands of them risking spending years studying only to find out that their certificates are unverified, or unaccepted for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, or rejected by professional bodies and employers.
Beyond the ban on the use of borrowed staff and equipment to obtain accreditation, the Federal Government should heavily sanction regulators like the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), and the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) for turning a blind eye to such brazen illegality, which has been going on for quite a while. Failure to do so compromises the government’s posture of no tolerance for shady practices in tertiary institutions.
For tertiary education to be fit for purpose in the country, there must be discipline, decorum and intellectual rigour. Motor park-style Shenanigans or behaviours must never be on display in ivory towers, else they become the butt of jokes.
When school authorities supervise or perpetrate bastardisation of the admission process, borrow staff, equipment and laboratories with the intent to deceive government agencies to earn unmerited accreditation, students who benefitted from the skewed admission cannot be said to be found worthy in “character and learning,” which is an age-old mantra of ivory towers.
The era of turning tertiary institutions’ admissions into a revenue-generating scheme through illegal acceptance fees, unapproved tuition charges, and personal kickbacks should be ended forthwith. While Alausa rightly vowed, “We cannot continue to deceive our citizens,” he should go beyond rhetoric to ensure that the government ceases to tolerate practices that undermine the quality of tertiary education. The minister should also end the ignoble amnesty for beneficiaries of back-door admission in tertiary institutions.
The NUC must be effective in playing its role because what is happening gives the impression that there is laxity in its operations, especially when little or nothing is heard by the public about schools that have been sanctioned for wrongdoing.
As matters stand, only sanctioning tertiary institutions and their leaders would deter mindless wrongdoings that are proliferating in the tertiary ecosystem. Ivory towers, by themselves, must, by their actions and inaction, show the rest of society that they merit the honour and respect that society confers on them.
