Tag: JAMB

At the introduction of JAMB into the Nigerian university system, there were only a handful of universities needing her services. This is very much unlike now when there are hundreds of institutions that have, by law, contracted their admission tests to this body. Apart from the number of institutions it caters for, the number of candidates, all of them hopeful but most of them incompetent, generates a concern for the administrators of JAMB. This is especially so, given the delicacy of every step involved in any examination process. The only saving grace here is that the vast majority of those involved in this particular process were also candidates for this examination, at one time or the other. It should not be difficult for them to put themselves in the shoes of current candidates, at least from the point of view of familiarity.

Examinations are a test of character in many respects. They not only test your familiarity with your subject but demand that you show your competitive spirit. In this respect, you are in competition with yourself but more importantly, with many thousand others coming from any number of diverse backgrounds. It is one thing to score a passing grade, it is another thing entirely to pass well enough to be admitted to their preferred course of study in the institution of their choice. In other words each candidate is under considerable pressure to put their best foot forward and turn in a performance which under the circumstances must be the best.

Nigeria was much saner in every respect at the time, before JAMB when I applied for admission to the pharmacy programme at the University of Ife, the only pharmacy degree awarding institution in the country then. The whole admission process went on with the precision of an expensive Swiss watch. The relevant form was obtained, filled and returned promptly, long before the advertised closing date. My HSC grades fell within the required range. I waited patiently for the result of my application which at the appointed time was published in the Daily Sketch two months before the resumption date. I duly turned up in Ife for a one week orientation programme on the appointed day, which was the first time I set foot on the hallowed grounds of the university, on which  I spent the next fifty years. The situation has changed drastically.

As a university lecturer, I always got to know when JAMB results were about to be released. That is because I always received messages to that effect from relatives, friends, casual acquaintances and the occasional total stranger. In those days, before the now ubiquitous cell phone changed our lives, a few of these people took the trouble to come all the way from Lagos to deliver their message in a face to face encounter. They all made me aware of what their respective ward scored in the soon to be released examination result, as if I should be interested in their tidings. Whatever it was the score, it was followed by the fervent plea that I did all I could to ensure that the owner of that score was admitted to the course of their choice, usually, medicine, law, pharmacy or engineering. This was before the score was officially released! No matter, they had somehow subboned the system by finding a way through what I always thought was a tight security system to gain access to the JAMB computer. All this trouble was taken so as to give their ward some advantage in the lobbying stakes. The general and strongly held belief was that whatever the score was, the only way to secure admission was on the basis of who was going to champion their cause within the university.  When I asked those with high, even very high scores why they had bothered to come to see me, they always reminded me, as if I needed to be reminded; ‘this is Nigeria, you cannot afford to stay at home and expect that justice will be done in your case, whatever the merit of that case.’

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Those who scored low marks, were also not shy about making the same journey. After all, what you needed to do, as far as they were concerned under whatever circumstance you found yourself in , in Nigeria your case was still strong as long as you had someone with some form of authority in your corner, to push your case. Both statements show the disregard that we all have for the fairness of due process in our country. Given this background, it is clear that JAMB or even panels of judges at the Supreme court are on a hiding to nothing, whatever their respective verdict in any case brought before them. People have arrived at this point after a spate of bitter experiences and therefore, cannot be questioned. But, the real lesson here is that all those who cannot show any confidence in any of our institutions also work within one of those institutions. For example, in the bad old days when JAMB computers were pregnant with results for weeks, it was the work of a few high denomination Naira notes for the pregnancy to be tampered with and marks altered in favour of those who knew their way around the relevant offices.

In Nigeria, our institutions are to be subboned and prevented from delivering services as they are meant to be. That has come to be expected. Another factor that is designed to cripple the workings of a body like JAMB is our strong collective contempt for merit. It is something that we prefer to leave to the birds. How else can you explain why more than 1.95 million candidates were enrolled for an examination in which only just more than 400,000 scored a pass mark? Surely, those who have any respect for merit should on self assessment know that they have very little chance of passing that examination. In spite of their poor performance, they are still hopeful of gaining admission to the university of their choice even at the expense of people who have performed better in the examination. These are the kinds of persons JAMB has to deal with year after year, making theirs a high pressure cooker job for which they cannot be paid highly enough. There is no earthly reason why anyone who cannot score more than 160 marks out of a possible 400 should be exposed to the rigours of any form of education   at the tertiary level. Anything else is a waste of time as the demands of education at this level are too high for such creatures to cope with. They have already consumed a great deal of public resources for nothing up till that point. Going beyond it deprives other people the opportunity of utilising the resources which are only there to be frittered áway over nothing by inept persons. who cannot score above 40%.

It is that time of the year again when we are subjected to JAMB matters on all news platforms. After such consistent bombardments, it is surprising that the level of ignorance of JAMB matters is still more than head high and growing. It is however apparent that a great deal of this ignorance is carefully cultivated. And it stems from our distrust of practically all our public institutions. This being the case,  announcements from any of our institutions, starting from the lofty presidency to the lowliest public office is treated with healthy suspicion, if not downright derision. Given this background, it is not surprising that virtually everything coming out of JAMB, a government institution is, first critically examined and then discarded unless it fits a preconceived point of view.

The problem with JAMB is that it serves three opposed sides whose interests are not only mutually exclusive but very often, antagonistic. On one side are the cadidates, staunchly supported by their parents and those other parties that support their aspirations. It matters very little if their candidacy is tottering on rickety legs, the only acceptable result is a pass, followed by admission to one of the ‘attractive’ courses on offer, preferably in one of the first generation universities. In addition, there are the proprietors of secondary schools for whom the annual JAMB examinations create an avenue for the advertisement of their prowess in getting their pupils into some prestigious university or the  other. They pay good money to newspapers for the privilege of showing off the flattering mug shots of their students who clear the 300 mark hurdle in the JAMB examinations. The students enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame and thereafter sink into the obscurity of typical Nigerian undergraduate existence.

On one other side are the universities represented by their lecturers, administrators and alumni based all over the world. They are all anxious for their university to  be counted as one of the best in the land so that they can continue to attract the best students and maintain an enviable position on the log table of the nation’s universities. Nobody is now sure when the listing of Nigerian universities began and the criteria used to determine the quality of universities but nobody can resist the temptation to check up on the performance of his old university on the current table. These days, the scene has been muddled by the arrival of private universities who see their position on the log table as an advertising point, designed to attract fee paying clients.

The third side is occupied solely by JAMB itself and it suffers from being representative of government control. This is a weak position to be in because, as a rule Nigerian governments of whatever stripe are viewed with deep and abiding suspicion. There was a time, in the days of colonialist existence when this position could be understandable or perhaps excused but now, very close to seventy years after independence, this status quo is at least rather puzzling. The machinery of government is now operated by Nigerians and yet, this perception of government as a foreign institution persists. This is to an extent that JAMB is fair game for sabotage and if it is efficient against all the odds stacked against it, it cannot be working in the interest of the nation. For example, cheating in the JAMB examinations is not only condoned but is actively encouraged in certain quarters. This is why when a candidate forged her own result to put herself on top of the pile a large number of  Nigerians believed her cock and bull story rather than the official and authentic explanation put out by JAMB. From the benefit of my fifty year experience within the Nigerian university system, I quite understand this thinking. Those who pass examinations do so on the strength of their own efforts. On the other hand, those who fail owe their failure to the evil machinations of their examiners. JAMB, being the ultimate examiner in the land cannot, under any condition, be given the benefit of any doubt under whatever circumstances that may arise.

The omnipotence of the almighty JAMB is now no longer in doubt but, there was a time when, of course, it did not exist. All those who were admitted into any Nigerian university before 1978 did not have to sit for the JAMB examination. Up till that date, each university was wholly responsible for all the exercises involved with the recruitment of all their students. This meant that students applied to the universities of their choice and their applications were processed by each university. In my case, I applied to three universities at a time when there were only four functional universities. A fair proportion of my contemporaries did the same thing and were duly admitted to all three even though this caused considerable chaos to the system. This is because those superfluous admissions constituted a block to other applicants who were qualified, albeit at a lower level to those who had been admitted. This did not foul up the system as it could very well have done because of the relatively few number of universes and applicants. In addition, a large number of applicants were considered for admission on the basis of their Advanced level results. By the mid-seventies however, not only were there more universities but the majority of candidates were being admitted through the concretionary route which was through an examination. They were then admitted to what was regarded as a preliminary year. At Ife in those days, this year was regarded as Part zero to signify that those in that group were being prepared for admission to the university proper. This being the case, it was thought expedient to merge the examination process in all Nigerian universities into one hence the establishment of a Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB). This made a whole lot of sense at the time, especially because all the existing universities were Federal government institutions. The current situation is much different seeing that not only are there as many as fity-one Federal universities but also, hundreds of other institutions for which JAMB is responsible. It must also be acknowledged that the number of candidates handled by JAMB has in the interim increased from less than a hundred thousand to well over a million. None of these challenges is crushing, at least not as problematic as the integrity or, the lack of it of the human beings involoved in the examination process.

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If there was an integrity index in Nigeria, it would have crashed precipitously since that first JAMB examination in 1978. Even then, the human element in the administration of admission matters was never zero from the onset. I found this to be so through personal experience. My first involvement with JAMB was in 1982 when as the Vice- Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy I was responsible for the admission of students to the Faculty. Unlike the general belief, then and now, the authority to admit candidates into Nigerian universities resides in individual universities. Each university informs JAMB of their minimum standards and from then on, it is the business of JAMB to hold each institution to that standard. This is why there are different cut off points for different institutions even though there is now a JAMB standard which in any case, is set by the universities.

In 1982, university admission was still a cosy family affair. For that purpose, there was a Medicine/Pharmacy admissions committee which met in the Ikoyi premises of JAMB. All the members of that committee came with their results printout sheets and presented those  results to the committee. We then presented our recommendations and admissions were made based on what had been earlier presented. 40% was based on merit, 30% on catchment area, 20% on candidates from what were called educationally disadvantaged states leaving 10% to our discretion. There were virtually no qualified candidates from educationally disadvantaged areas and few candidates from outside our catchment area had bothered to apply to us for admission, bearing in mind, the disadvantage posed by their state of origin. This meant that virtually all the qualified candidates that were within our 90% zone were admitted. The most compelling fallout from this exercise was that for us, unlike in the past, most of the successful candidates were from the South West. That has been the case since then so that the ethnic diversity which had been the hallmark of the university was diluted noticeably. This has affected most other Nigerian universities.

Over the years however, the examination board has had to cope with situations which were  not thought of in 1978. For a start, candidates and their sponsors have over the years become increasingly desperate and unscrupulous. So-called miracle centres which have increased cheating to an art form have sprung up all over the place. The situation is such that candidates are aided and abetted by all their significant others including their anxious parents and teachers. The energy with which JAMB must cope with this maleficence is tremendous. There was a time in the nineties when the examination was overwhelmed by this integrity problem so that her published results were stripped of all credibility. The situation was so bad that it became apparent in the performance of the students who were admitted into the university during this period was woeful. The matriculants were loud, empty headed and showed barely concealed contempt for virtually all aspetcts of university culture. In short, too many of them were simply intolerable but they could not be weeded out. That was when the universities reacted by placing another hurdle between the JAMB examination and final admission in defence of their integrity. Hence, post-JAMB tests were instituted.