Olakunle Olafioye
Again, the propriety of sustaining the existence of the post-UTME (Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, PUTME, has come under the searchlight of the National Assembly. The House of Representatives had at its plenary penultimate week resolved to direct tertiary institutions in the country to stop the post-UTME screening. The lawmakers resolved to mandate the House Committee on Tertiary Education and Services to call for a joint meeting of the Federal Ministry of Education, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the National Universities Commission (NUC) to develop a unified template.
Post-UTME is a subsidiary examination (which is often a computer-based test or oral screening) conducted by individual tertiary institutions for candidates seeking admission into such higher institutions of learning after meeting the cut off mark based on their performance in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, conducted by JAMB.
Ademorin Kuye, who sponsored the motion, said despite having to pay for UTME and the rigorous registration and examination process candidates are subjected to before writing the JAMB CBT examination, tertiary institutions still subject students to yet another fee for Post-UTME “without any consideration for indigent parents and students.”
The lawmaker who questioned the importance of post-UTME when the institutions in the country claim to have trust in the examinations conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO).
The motion was supported by Ben Chinedu, a member from Anambra State, who argued that the exercise was illegal. “Post-UTME has no basis in the law. It is an external examination process created by the universities to exploit our children,” he said.
Opposition to post-UTME dates back 2016 with many critics insisting that the examination was an unnecessary and unjust way to make money off the students. In 2017, a former member, Umaru Kurfi, had moved a motion to ban the compulsory post-UTME examination.
Commenting on the motion, Ahmed Lawan, who was the Senate Leader back then, had said there was no need for the tests after candidates had passed the JAMB UTME.
His words: “There is no need for this test. If we say we believe in JAMB, then, there is no cause for setting up a post-UTME test. It amounts to stress and unnecessary financial request,” Lawan said in 2017.
In 2018, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja declared the post-UTME conducted by higher institutions in Nigeria illegal. The court said that there was no law that authorised universities, polytechnics, monotechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria to conduct post-UTME.
The court also ruled that JAMB is the only body recognized by law to conduct matriculation examinations and offer admissions into tertiary institutions by virtue of section 5 (1) (2) of the JAMB Act.
Delivering judgment in the suit filed by the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) against JAMB, the Minister of Education, and the National Universities Commission (NUC), Justice John Tsoho held that the defendants had no power to allow or direct tertiary institutions to conduct further screening of candidates after they had taken the UTME.
The court also issued an injunction that restrained all tertiary institutions in the country from conducting the post-UTME or any other form of admission screening tests.
But the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) faulted the decision to cancel screening tests. The South West Zonal Co-ordinator of the union, Prince Olawale Adetunji, had said that the cancellation would worsen the decay in the nation’s education sector.
He argued that the government was not being realistic with the stoppage of the tests, saying over 70 percent of candidates offered admission into tertiary institutions through the UTME conducted by the Joint Admission Matriculation Board were aided to pass the examinations.
Not a few Nigerians feel that JAMB is indeed far from perfecting its system against examination malpractice to make post-UTME unnecessary in admission process into the nation’s tertiary institutions. An educationist, Mr. Kenneth Iredia, noted that until the JAMB succeeded in ridding its system of the flaws noticed in the conduct of its examinations, tertiary institutions in the country would continue to need to subject candidates seeking admission to further tests to be able to determine those suitable for admission their institutions.
“We have been complaining that graduates from the nation’s institutions of higher learning are not employable without paying attention to the quality of people that are being given admission into them. Lecturers are not magicians; they will only work with the students admitted by their institutions. Yes, I agree that Nigerian students are being subjected to several levels of examinations before securing admission into tertiary institutions. But who can vouch for the integrity of the examinations conducted by examination bodies in Nigeria?
“We are in a nation where we have syndicates that deliver good results to students who didn’t sit for examinations. A good number of them were discovered during the last UTME and paraded on TV. Of course, some of these cheats must have gone uncaught. What has JAMB done to prevent future oc
currence? The best way to prevent such cheats from having undue advantage over those who studied hard for the examination is to subject them to another internal test that will help to determine those who are genuinely qualified to be offered admission,” Iredia said.
Speaking in the same vein, Coordinator, Unique Tutorial Centre, Lagos, Mr. Femi Olaore, said Nigerians need to look beyond the extra cost incurred and the rigour of sitting for post-UTME after sitting for SSCE and UTME, saying findings have shown that students who sat for multiple examinations before securing admission into higher institutions of learning turn out to be better prepared for the challenges of tertiary education.
“UTME comes up in the first quarter of the year while admission into tertiary institutions often starts around third or fourth quarter of the year. Naturally, most students tend to stop reading after examinations. So, imagine a situation where a student abandons his books almost a year before gaining admission into university. But where there is the consciousness of having to sit for another examination that will definitely keep them on their toes. So, we must look beyond the pains students have to go through before writing post-UTME or the extra costs their parents have to incur to register them for the screening test.
But many parents and students feel otherwise. A few parents who spoke to Sunday Sun on the issue expressed concern over the multiple payments they incur before their children gain admission into higher institutions while the students complained about the pressure of sitting for multiple examinations, describing the experience as exhausting and draining. “My major concern about this issue is the financial burden parents have to bear. You spend about N5,000 to register your child for JAMB. Again when the result comes out JAMB will demand another N2,500 before you get the original printout of the result. Then you still have to register for post-UTME, which when you factor in other logistics, you will be spending close to another N10,000. I think government needs to look into this because the times are hard,” a parent, Mrs. Kehinde Abolaji, said