2016: Why admission crisis may rock Nigerian Universities

Prospective admission seekers into Nigerian universities are at a loss over the procedure for gaining admission into the universities following the abolition of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). Many students had prepared for the UTME prior to the hard stance of the Education Minister, Mallam Adamau Adamu, who insisted that the universities screening exams should be abolished and remained banned.

Banning Post UTME in Universities

In a combined policy meeting on admissions to universities, polytechnics and other higher institutions in Nigeria, Adamu said since the federal government and the Nigerian public have confidence in the examinations conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, there was no need for other examinations to be conducted by universities after the JAMB exams.

According to him, “As far as I am concerned, the nation has confidence in what JAMB is doing, the universities should not be holding another examination and if the universities have any complaints against JAMB, let them bring it and then we address it. But if JAMB is qualified enough to conduct tests and they have conducted test, then there will be no need to conduct another test for students to gain admission

Malam Adamu Adamu, Minister of Education
“The ministry expects that all candidates given admission must be from JAMB. But JAMB must stop issuing admission letters. JAMB should get in touch with the institutions before offering admission to students. The closing date is November 30th and no university should exceed its admission capacity and any tertiary institution that doesn’t follow the rule, the ministry would start sanctioning them.”

While the statement by the education minister may be seen as informal, the ministry as a follow up, made a press release banning all higher institutions from conducting any further examination besides the exam conducted by JAMB for the purposes of admission, warning that any institution found culpable would face necessary sanctions.

The statement was issued on behalf of the minister by the ministry’s deputy director of press and public relations, Mr. Ben Goong. The ban, in the release, was with immediate effect and directed all institutions to comply without raising eyebrows.

“The ban is with immediate effect, and under no circumstance should any institution violate the directive. The responsibility for admission into public tertiary institutions lies solely with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and under no circumstance whatsoever, should anybody or institution take over that responsibility by proxy.

“For the avoidance of doubt, any educational institution after secondary education is regarded as a tertiary institution. Therefore, all tertiary institutions, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education, Universities or by whatever name it is called after secondary education, must be subjected to admission through the JAMB,’’ the official statement finally read.

Graduating students
By this directive, all higher institutions are only expected to screen the certificates of the prospective students and ascertain qualifications for admission into the higher institutions.

The ministry further warned that the screening should be done at no financial cost to the parents and should be done upon resumption to avoid unnecessary travels which could be hazardous. Adamu was quoted as saying that since the inception of the post UTME, the universities have not been able to prove that they have gotten better students than the ones deemed fit by JAMB.

He explained that students admitted through post UTME are still being expelled on a yearly basis for poor academic performance, hence the universities have failed to convince the ministry on why it should not ban the screening examination into the higher instituti