JAMB, universities may clash over Post-UME
By Segun Olatunji, Kaduna
Published: Wednesday, 22 Oct 2008

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and the universities may be on a collision course as the board has cautioned them to stop encroaching on its legal functions through their conduct of the post-University Matriculation Examinations.

JAMB advised the universities to immediately restrict themselves to the proper screening of candidates that met the prescribed scores qualifying them for admission rather than conducting another examination for them under the guise of Post-UME.

The board said it was surprised that instead of screening the qualified candidates after the release of the Universities Matriculation Examination results, the universities engaged in the conduct of what it described as” second-leg examination” for the candidates who had met the cut-off marks.

This, it said, contradicted the purpose for which the board backed by the requisite law was set up.

The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. ‘Dibu Ojerinde, stated these while speaking with journalists shortly after the opening of the Technical Committee meeting on admissions to National Diploma and Nigerian Certificate in Education-awarding institutions at the Kaduna State University.

Ojerinde warned that JAMB would no longer tolerate acts that could undermine the law or the decree establishing it.

He said it was a great irony that the universities which provided all the questions administered on candidates during the UME examinations exercise, would go round again to conduct separate examinations under the guise of Post-UME screening.

“The universities set all the questions administered by JAMB and we see no reason they should go back again and set separate questions themselves during the Post-UME screening.

“If in the first instance, they are saying that the questions they set and provided to JAMB for the examinations are bad and they are now engaging in setting another separate questions to be administered in their universities, so who is blaming who?,” the JAMB boss said.

Ojerinde who was represented on the occasion by the JAMB Director of Finance and Accounts, Mallam Yakubu Umar, argued that, ”the issue of Post-UME examination is illegal because by law and the decree setting up JAMB, it states that JAMB is the only body in the country that actually administers examinations into tertiary institutions, be it universities, polytechnics, monotechnics and colleges of education, for admission purposes.”

God help nigeria students
at the end of the day. no matter the fight
na students go suffer am