Recently, the Joint Admissions
and Matriculation Board (JAMB) announced at the end of its 2015 Combined Policy
Meeting that it had adopted a policy whereby surplus applicants to a university
for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) will be
re-distributed to other universities with lower number of applicants than their
capacities.
Expectedly, the policy drew
the ire of stakeholders, particularly parents of the applicants, who feared
that their children and wards might be re-distributed to universities in parts
of the country with peculiar security challenges, especially the North-East,
which has been ravaged by the activities of Boko Haram insurgents for years
now.
Many parents equally feared
that they might be landed with the option of having their children offered
admission into institutions where they could not easily afford the tuition and
other expenses. They thus saw the directive as capable of railroading them into
situations they had initially avoided through the choices of institutions made
by their children and wards. The hysteria and protests which greeted the
directive are quite understandable, given the complexities of a society such as
ours.
Late last month, the Federal
Government, through the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of
Education, Mr. MacJohn Nwaobiala, announced that it had overruled JAMB on
the policy, thus returning the admission quandary to status quo, while at the
same time disclosing that government had commenced consultation with the aim of
identifying where adjustments could be made.
JAMB authorities may have been
altruistic with the policy. The overriding concern might also have been to
ensure that applicants get into school, even if they were not the candidates’
choice.
However, we urge that urgent,
long-term solutions should be found to the admission problem. There are about
140 universities in Nigeria, with a total admission capacity of 450,000. Given
that over 1,300,000 candidates wrote the 2015 UTME, it is certain that more
than 800,000 applicants will not find space. This has been a recurring problem
which forces many parents to seek admissions for their children in private
universities at home and abroad.
Indeed, it is a shame that
because of this admission crunch, Nigerians spend close to N160 billion
annually educating their children in Ghana alone. It is almost certain that
Nigerians spend more than that educating their children in Europe and America
and other parts of the world.
The risk of having our
children educated by other cultures is that at this rate we are evolving a
future generation of Nigerians with little or no empathy for their
nation-state. We are programming ourselves to self-destruct. The trend must be
reversed urgently with enduring solutions.
JAMB should consult widely
among stakeholders and ensure they institute admission policies that will carry
everybody along.
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