We must not allow JAMB and NECO to be scrapped

This is because if you don’t know where you are coming from, you may not know where you are going to.  In other words if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. It is always of pertinent to look back and that is […]

This is because if you don’t know where you are coming from, you may not know where you are going to.  In other words if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. It is always of pertinent to look back and that is history. The creation of JAMB was one of the good policies of Obasanjo’s military administration.
JAMB came into being during Obasanjo Military regime to deal with issues of taking candidates who had not met the required papers because at that time the standard for entry into University Education System was two or three A levels and five credits O level. But the universities were taking people with qualifications lower than that setup as the standard. The second issue was problem of multiple admission of students where student would apply for several universities and would all be admitted into those universities and therefore making it difficult for eligible candidates to gain entrance taking into cognizance of the fact that universities in those days were very few for a teeming population to accommodate.
In view of the problems enumerated above, the Obasanjo Military regime set up a committee to work into these problems and mandated then to come up with a blueprint that would tackle the problem. The Lead Person in this committee single-handily put up papers to formalized and regularized the admission process. This man did a very fantastic work that gave birth to JAMB. In other to appreciate his effort, the Federal Military Government made him the first JAMB Registrar. This gentleman is no other person than Mr. MICHEAL SAIDU ANGULU of blessed memory. Mr. Michael was the first English Graduate in the whole of Northern Nigeria.
On NECO, the examination body was established as a sister institution to WAEC, because at a point the WAEC body became less effective to adequately handle the large numbers of students who write these papers every year. And as if that is not enough another problem began to rear its head when candidates from the south would have chains of A1 which they could not defend. This scenario came to be noticed by the Northerners as a lot of students do apply for Northern Universities which they thought would be less competitive, because the trend of Western education started from the South up North which gave the south an age over the North. So every body in the North began to hear of examination leakages in the south, most especially Lagos where peoples believed money is everything because it can buy anything at anytime.
These were some of the reasons why NECO was set up, because the Northerner became suspicious of WAEC which is dominated by the Southerners.
Indeed, to state the obvious. The NECO took up very well, but has lost the luster and its integrity when corruption which greeted JAMB, WAEC and other institutions, NECO, too was found deep neck in this anomalies. Cheating in examinations is now Ubiquitous in the country, neither North nor South can exonerate itself from, but the North will still say it is more brazenly seen in the South.
Nigerians should not cry hue to say the JAMB and NECO be cancelled it with the benefit of hindsight one should look at the issues that warranted the creation of these institutions. The stakeholders in the education sector should sit down to look into the problems bedevilling it and proffer solutions to it. I think when that is done they will quickly find out that the problem is not with the institution itself per se, rather than corruption which has eaten deep into our whole fabric of human existence.
Also, at this juncture, I will like the Northerners and their leaders, most especially bodies like Northern Governor’s Forum, Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) Arewa Elders Forum (AEF) and other similar bodies in the North to sit down and talk to the themselves to fashion out a way of tackling problems that is facing NECO today as if it scrapping NECO, the majority of our youth will bear the brunt. Let our leaders give priority to education, let them put a coordinated investment in this sector that will engender good outcome.
CONCLUSION: the Federal Government should rather be up to his responsibilities by becoming up and doing in checking for corruption and should seek to elevate people of integrity in the positions of authority because cancelling JAMB and NECO will not and will never give the desired result.  It will rather amount to throwing baby away with the bathed water.
Bida can be reached at: [email protected].