Ban on Post-Jamb exam shallow thought, autocratic – ASUU

THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan Chapter has described the decision to ban post-JAMB examinations in Nigerian universities as a “shallow thought and autocratic” that would add no value to our education in the country.

The Union said this through its Chairman, Dr. Deji Omole in a statement yesterday.

While arguing that the decision was unbecoming of a person occupying the exalted position of a minister, Dr Omole said the pronouncements by the Minister of Education Adamu Adamu had eroded the autonomy of university in admission of students.

The lecturer further noted that the ‘autocratic pronouncement’ was a non issue when compared with fundamental issue of funding universities and meeting ASUU-FGN 2009 agreements.
He added that the ban was more disturbing and ill-timed now that the Federal government is owing public universities about N1billion intervention fund.

With the ban, Omole said it was obvious that the Education Minister was oblivious of extant university autonomy granted the Senate of Nigerian Universities to determine the procedures for the conduct of admission and regulate admission of its students.

Dr Omole stated that the decentralisation of JAMB should be carried out by federal government since the examination body‎ lacked the ability to conduct credible and dependable examination upon which credible universities like University of Ibadan can rely.

Making reference to a research conducted by Professor Afolabi Bamgboye in the University of Ibadan, he stressed that the findings revealed that higher JAMB scores have negative relationship with the performances of students at 100 university degree examinations.

According to Dr Omole, JAMB has outlived its credibility as indicated in last examination exercise it conducted where candidates who did not finish examinations or had issues with their Computer Based Test were awarded extra 40 marks arbitrarily without justifications.

” A Nigerian Minister of Education must make pronouncement based on sound academic research not on road-side talk which queries his very essence of being appointed as a Minister.

“This study, he said, showed that UME score has either a negative or weak correlation with performance at university level indicating that the higher the scores at UME the lower is the performance at 100 level as shown by the Cumulative Grade Point Averages (CGPA) at university degree examination.

The results of the research however established that the performance at SSCE or NECO is statistically significantly correlated with CGPA. This shows that the performance at SSCE may be a good determinant of student academic ability to cope with university education because of their high performance at 100 level. How are we to admit based on a Board that award arbitrary marks to students? As it stands University of Ibadan can only admit 10percent of those who apply to it.”