Federal government decided to scrap NECO and restructure JAMB

Nigeria Government

The Federal government decided to scrap the National Examinations Council (NECO) and restructure the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) as part of its effort to organise its parastatals.

According to this arrangement, NECO will be scraped while the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) shall be allowed to conduct two external examinations in January and November and still conduct the May-June Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE). Also under the new arrangement, JAMB should be retained while the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) shall cease to exist. However, JAMB shall assume the duty as a central clearing house for all admissions.

This arrangement also empowers the various higher institutions to conduct admission examinations for their candidates. This means that anyone that wants to enter a higher institution should purchase admission form directly from his/her preferred school and thereafter, sit for the school's admission examination.

Many groups and individuals have been crying loud that these government decisions will automatically deny the poor from gaining admission and that the employees of these parastatals will lose their jobs causing severe hardship to their families. Some also argue that the Federal Character will be a total joke if UTME cease to exist.

Also, some of this groups claim that admission into Universities that are considered first choice like University of Lagos; Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka; University of Ibadan; Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife; University of Ilorin and University of Benin will be a no-go-area because these institutions will witness a multitude of candidates and this will certainly make their admission processes difficult because selecting the best from their candidates will be a difficult task due to the fact that the National Universities Commission (NUC) assigned various admission quotas to these institutions.

For example, in a situation whereby over 100,000 candidates sit for admission examination in any of these schools, the school will only admit about 5000 candidates out of the 100,000 leaving the remaining 95,000 to wait for another year. People supporting this argument claim that if UTME holds, the number of candidates for various schools will certainly reduce because the schools will only invite those that made their required cutoff points to come for Post-UTME screening.

I agree with these facts but I don't think that they are enough for government to retain UTME. Since JAMB still remains the central clearing house, they should be empowered to fix the admission forms fee for all schools. Also those people claiming that this policy will kill the federal character should note that the Principle of Federal Character is one of the killers of the nation's education sector. In a sane country, only the duly academically qualified candidates are allowed to attend higher education. A situation where an individual who cannot make a correct sentence is admitted into a tertiary institution, while a more qualified individual is denied such admission due to Federal Character Principle is cancerous to the wellbeing of our education sector.

What I advice the government to do is to empower the capacity of all the tertiary institutions to make room for admission of more qualified candidates. Also JAMB should put necessary measures in place to ensure a transparent admission process. Writing UTME and thereafter sitting for Post-UTME is uncalled for.

Furthermore, I disagree with the government's plan to scrap NECO because it will be a great shame that the Giant of Africa does not have a national examination body. Assuming WAEC faces any major challenge that might lead to suspension of its examinations in an academic year, what will then be the fate of the SSCE students?

Finally, let us continue to give all necessary support to the government so that if they fail, we shall have every reason to vote them out of office.