Academic Staff Union of Universities,
ASUU, has kicked against the recent
policy of reassignment of candidates
against their choices being adopted by the
Joint Admission and Matriculation Board,
JAMB.

The union said JAMB has made the
admission process chaotic and exposed
candidates to fraudsters.

ASUU said the admission body must
respect candidate’s preferences and
choices for tertiary institutions and
consider security of lives of applicants,
cost, proximity, quality, and rights of the
Nigerian child in arriving at any policy.

Upon approval at the recent 6th Combined
Policy Meeting on admissions to Degree,
Certificate in Education, National Diploma
and Innovation Diploma awarding
institutions in Abuja, JAMB had pegged
cut off marks for admission in the country
to 180 and 150 for varsities and others
respectively.

While JAMB warned that no institution
should go below the marks, the dust
raised by last week’s protests at the
University of Lagos, UNILAG, over alleged
exclusion of over 50,000 prospective
students who chose the institution is yet
to settle.

The university had increased its cut-off
mark from 200 to 250, with approval from
JAMB, while only 9,000 applicants were to
sit for the Post-UTME conducted by the
institution.

Chairman of the University of Ibadan (UI)
chapter of ASUU, Prof. Olusegun Ajiboye,
who said this while speaking with
journalists in Ibadan, also called on
Nigerians to join the call for the total
scrapping of JAMB, saying it has outlived
its usefulness.

He described the policy put in place by
JAMB as insensitive and exploitative of
the children of the poor, adding that it
amounted to abuse of their fundamental
human rights of freedom of choice.

He lashed out at the Prof. Dibu Ojerinde-
led JAMB Board for being so insensitive to
the plights of the Nigerian masses, whose
parents have not been paid for months by
some governors but are now being forced
to pay N1, 000 to know where they are
reassigned against their choices.

Ajiboye asked JAMB to respect the Act
establishing it [Act 5 (c i-iii)], which
prescribes that the placement of suitable
qualified candidates into tertiary
institutions must take into account “the
preferences expressed or otherwise
indicated by candidates for certain tertiary
institutions and courses; the vacancies
available in each tertiary institution; the
guidelines approved for each tertiary
institution by its proprietor or other
competent authority.”

In the absence of a substantive Minister
of Education, the ASUU boss called on
President Muhammadu Buhari to call the
JAMB to order so as not to make the
children of the masses who populate
public schools suffer.

He berated the racket on the sale of
scratch cards, which had been mopped up
at JAMB offices by agents who now sell it
for N1,500 to candidates, urging the
President to probe the over N1bn that
would be generated what he called
‘unpopular policy’.

According to him, the University of Ibadan
for instance, provides a level playing
ground for students who scored 200 and
above in JAMB examination to compete
for the available spaces in the university.

He said: “Candidates choose universities
considering quality, cost, proximity,
courses of choice, among others. Will Dibu
Ojerinde pay for the fees so charged by
the institutions (including exorbitant fees
in private and state universities) where
the candidates have been reassigned?
“If a candidate is reassigned from Lagos
to Ondo State, will Professor Dibu Ojerinde
foot the bill and expenses incurred and in
case of any accident. Who is JAMB
protecting; the candidates or their cronies
in other institutions? It has to go.

“An institution that asked candidates to
make their choices of universities,
polytechnic and monotechnics has now
turned back to impose tertiary institutions
on candidates and is demanding another
N1,000 to access information. This JAMB
has outlived its usefulness.”

In a related development, Secretary
General of Committee of Provosts of
Colleges of Education in Nigeria, Prof. Olu
Akeusola said the Federal Government
should split JAMB Board into three and
assign each of them a specific role as
regards the conduct of entrance
examinations into tertiary institutions in
the country.

He said there should be a unit that will
conduct exam strictly for students seeking
admission into the universities, while each
of the two other units should do likewise
for the polytechnic and colleges of
education.

Prof. Akeusola, who is also the Provost,
Michael Otedola College of Primary
Education, MOCPED, Noforija-Epe, Lagos
State, made the call at the weekend,
saying such split was necessary not only
to prevent confusion in what determines
the cut-off marks for each level of the
tertiary education, but also to make the
exams more credible and of international
standards.

He said it was awkward that those who
want to go to university to study
medicine, engineering, law or education
for example will sit for the same exam
with those who want to go to either
polytechnic or colleges of education and
still be placed on the same grading.

“How can you test a teacher with the
same parameter for testing a medical
doctor or an engineer? That is why this
JAMB’s unified examination to me should
be decentralised,” he said.

Akeusola further argued that for JAMB to
post candidates to schools other than
their preferred choice under unclear terms
was tantamount to infringement on their
fundamental human rights.

“If a candidate is not qualified by the
parameter of a particular institution, such
a candidate would need to be told rather
than imposing another school on him or
her,” he said.

JAMB, yesterday reacted to the criticisms
that has attended the decision to allow
some universities determine their own cut-
off mark, saying such institutions were at
liberty to do so.

Head of Media, JAMB, Fabian Benjamin,
stated this in a statement made available
to journalists.

“The decision to have a national accepted
cut-off mark at policy meeting was to
serve as a guide and pruning mechanism
to give the tertiary institutions qualitative
and manageable candidates to choose
from a pool of candidates desirous of
tertiary education.

“However, universities and other levels of
tertiary institutions are at liberty to go
higher, but not lower depending on their
peculiarities and the performance of
candidates that choose them.

“Those candidates who do not meet the
cut-off marks of such institutions will be
placed in needy institutions within their
geopolitical zone depending on available
space in such institutions.

“The Board’s aim is to accommodate as
many candidates as possible instead of
just pushing them to schools we know ab
initio doesn’t have the carrying capacity
to admit all.

“For instance, University of Lagos with a
carrying capacity of about 9,000 has over
60,000 applying to them. The question is
what happens to the over 50,000? We
have other institutions like that and what
we are doing is to ensure that the
balance are also placed in other needy
institutions,” JAMB stated.

It added that the Board had redistributed
the other candidates who have cutoff
marks less than what their first choice
required to needy institutions and urged
candidates and parent to check the
Board’s website from Friday, 31st July,
2015 for their names and institutions they
are placed in.

Also commenting on the development,
Lagos based lawyer and human rights
activist, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, at the
weekend, said it is not possible for
parents and their children to set standard
for the University of Lagos.

He stated that the institution cannot lower
its standard because certain group are
protesting over their dissatisfaction with a
policy.

Falana, who was speaking in Ibadan, the
Oyo State capital urged parents and
applicants to consider the legal
implication of their actions.

According to him, JAMB is the only
agency saddled with the responsibility of
setting cut-off standard for institutions in
Nigeria going by the law that set it up.

He however urged the authority of the
institution to reconcile with JAMB so as
to ensure fair play in their dealings.

The legal practitioner also admonished
parents to desist from taking their children
to what he called ‘miracle centres’ for
examinations, saying such students might
not be able to defend it when they
eventually get to higher institutions.

Meanwhile, JAMB has concluded plans to
release names of all candidates who are
qualified to sit for this year’s post-Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination into all
public universities against their institutions
on Monday August 3.

Disclosing this yesterday, Head of JAMB,
Lagos Office, Dr. Beatrice Okorie, said the
list might even be released as early as
Friday, July 31, but that the grace of extra
two days would be to prepare against
unforeseen situation.

While advising all the 2015 UTME
candidates who meet up with the cut-off
marks to check JAMB’s website on that
date for their details and the list of
universities they have been redistributed
to, insisted that the Board would not go
back on its new admission policy.

According to her, the policy was to assist
candidates not to spend unnecessary
money on post-UTME in the universities
where they would not be considered for
admission due to limited space.

source: www.nationalmirroronline.net/new/ASUU-berates-jamb-over-varsity-admission-policy/

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