Those hate campaigns against JAMB

Lately, the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) and its leadership came under the floodlights and barrage of criticism from the media in the wake of ‘jambites’ protests in Lagos over Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UMTE)  cut-off marks controversy. Venom and bile spewed forth and back and calls for the scrapping, in one fell-swoop of […]

Lately, the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) and its leadership came under the floodlights and barrage of criticism from the media in the wake of ‘jambites’ protests in Lagos over Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UMTE)  cut-off marks controversy.
Venom and bile spewed forth and back and calls for the scrapping, in one fell-swoop of the 37-year-old board. Even suggestive insinuations were made for the sacking of its Registrar, Dibu Ojerinde, were well orchestrated.
The poser here is whether JAMB is indeed obsolete as posited by its critics. If the myriads of widely applauded achievements already in the public domain are anything to go by, the Ojerinde-led board may be said to have delivered on its mandate and even surpassed it; meaning the blame game for the lingering challenges in our educational sector belong elsewhere other than JAMB.
The massive deployment of IT infrastructure and the building of Computer Based Test Centres (CBTCs) nationwide ensured the board conducts UMTE for over 1.5 million candidates annually with results posted on-line within a few hours.
In 1978, only 96,884 candidates sat for JAMB with a primordial three months result waiting period. Thirty-seven years later, the board proved it has the capacity to cope with the digital progression of students’ population in line with international best practices. What critics want JAMB to do and is incapable of doing is take responsibility for total absorption of successful candidates into tertiary institutions of choice. That clearly does not fall within its mandate.
The 1978 JAMB enabling Act No.2 saddled it with the primary objective of ensuring uniform standards in the conduct of matriculation examinations and the placement of suitably qualified candidates into the nation’s tertiary institutions. The board later underwent a series of legislative metamorphosis. Its Act No. 33 of 1989 repealed the 1978 Act and Act No. 4 of 1993 all widened its scope of operations.
JAMB establishment was a product of collaboration between the government, the National Universities Commission and foreign experts from British and Canadian educational institutions that no doubt drew knowledge from their respective home experiences.
JAMB’s offer of assistance to students in securing admission in places other than their restricted choices, which is largely misconstrued, may have been informed by the doctrine of necessity. It is an ingenious way of mitigating a calamitous situation without it exceeding its mandate. Perhaps JAMB could truly act as an intervention agency to help provide infrastructure for higher student retention capacities in federal tertiary institutions nationwide to begin with.
In other climes, tertiary institutions are largely trusts/private sector driven with their governments merely exercising policy control. In Nigeria, governments at all levels hold tenaciously to ownership allowing loyal people to feast on them as candies.
The truth is that government must declare a state of emergency in the education sector and urgently convene a national summit of all stakeholders. Government itself has failed to live up to its responsibilities and institutions do not adhere strictly to stipulated guidelines on admissions. Most institutions see JAMB as encroaching on their autonomy. And post-UME imposed by autonomous institutions doubles the pains of admission seekers. If you scrap JAMB, you can only compound the problems. These are the challenges we need to contend with not the propriety or otherwise of JAMB’s demeanor.
JAMB as a public institution is definitely not above criticism but such should be constructive in order to help public discourse. Some critics calling for a reversion to the pre-1978 model appear bereft of knowledge that the board was created to correct past mischiefs. British students’ application figures of 80,003 and 700,000 in 1963 and 2010 respectively quoted by critics are a far cry from JAMB’s feat of 96,864 and 1.5m figures in 1978 and 2015 respectively.
Why would critics deal a debilitating blow on a performing agency and then spare the rod on delinquent bureaucrats dotting our ministries of education at both the federal and state levels? And if you scrap JAMB what would happen to it’s over 2000 employees and the multiplier effects on their dependent families, and by extension our economy? 
Ojrinde, an internationally acclaimed professor of tests and educational measurement, is a man ahead of his time. He met JAMB almost comatose and recreated it into an institutional behemoth such as one that now attracts both commendation and envy. In the face of attacks, the board is eternally estopped under civil service rules to shift blames.
The board’s management certainly deserves kudos not knocks, for taking the agency to its present soaring heights.
Adekoya, a public affairs analyst, wrote in from Suite 21, Bataiya Plaza, Area 11, Garki, Abuja.