Jamb’s plan to block backdoor admissions

The Registrar of JAMB, Prof Is-haq Oloyede is determined to stop the system of providing regularization to students admitted through a “backdoor” by Nigerian Universities.

Speaking at a training forum in Abuja, Prof Oloyede admitted that the organisation had yielded to the demands of Universities in the past at the cost of N5,000 per head, but will now discontinue the practice. It is required that JAMB provide admission letters for every student admitted into Nigerian Universities recognized by the National Universities Commission. These students were supposed to have written the compulsory Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), after which the schools offer admission perhaps with an additional screening test in the form of post-UTMEs.

However, it is common knowledge that many schools, after the JAMB processes, still go ahead to admit some students, and these would be those which Prof Oloyede describes as being “without capturing their picture, without capturing anything”. Colloquial descriptions like the ‘VC’s list’ are usually used to explain such admissions.

The backdoor admission is a feature of the corruption that occurs in the countries’ tertiary institutions where money and personal favors, as against merit and qualification, play a part in the admissions of students into programmes. JAMB has been corroborating these corrupt practices too, as the Registrar acknowledges the “abuse” of the process. The matriculations board has come under criticism recently for lowering its cut-off marks for tertiary admissions, particularly 120 for Universities. The reduction of the pass mark has been criticized as a lowering of the standards of the nation’s education.