Court outlaws second screening of university candidates

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has indicated it will appeal a recent high court ruling outlawing the 13-year-old practice among individual universities of re-screening university candidates who have already passed the national admission test known as the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

While parents and wards have welcomed the ruling, it has prompted dismay and confusion among the academic community which regards the second screening exam, known as the post-UTME, as a means of ensuring the quality of candidates admitted into the country’s tertiary institutions, many of whom have ‘doubtful credentials’ – a euphemism describing the prevalent culture of corruption and racketeering in Nigeria’s higher education admissions process.

The ruling by Justice John Tshoho on 1 March found that the post-UTME is not backed by law and therefore tertiary institutions had no power to conduct them. Unlike the post-UTME, the UTME is the product of an act of parliament. He declared that by virtue of Section 5(1) and (2) of the JAMB Act, only the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board can conduct matriculation examinations and give admission to candidates into tertiary institutions.

The case was brought against JAMB by the non-governmental organisation Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) which asked the court to outlaw any attempt by JAMB and the National Universities Commission to make it mandatory for candidates to undergo the second round of screening.

Appeal

Forty-eight hours after the judgment was delivered, JAMB Registrar Professor Is-haq Oloyede announced that his agency had already filed an appeal against the judgment with the appeal court. He said this agency was prepared to approach the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the apex court, if necessary.

Opposing the suit, JAMB argued that LEDAP had no legal standing to bring the action to court, but the judge rejected this objection stating that “a registered non-governmental organisation or an activist lawyer is allowed by law to pursue in court, the right of the largely ignorant members of the society”.

The court ruling has ignited sharp and opposing responses. A few days after the judgment, the Guardian newspaper of Nigeria republished an article headlined “Vindicated on the illegality of post-UTME” written by regular columnist Luke Onyekakeyah in September last year, in which he questioned the legality or otherwise of the post-UTME test, particularly against the backdrop of the fees paid by candidates to sit the examination.

“This test has become so controversial and ought to be challenged in a court of law. Is there a law establishing the post-UTME? I called some lawyers to get their view on the legality of post-UTME. All the lawyers said to the best of their knowledge, there is no known law that established the post-UTME in Nigeria. If that is the case, why leave an illegality to rule the system and even truncate the aspirations of most candidates? Who introduced the post-UTME in the first place and for what purpose?” he wrote.

Origins of the post-UTME

The post-UTME came into existence after Professor Osita Chinedu Nebo, then the vice-chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka, tabled before the Committee of Vice-Chancellors in August 2005 samples of the results of some of the best JAMB candidates offered admission into his university as well as their first-year results. There were embarrassing and inexplicable discrepancies between the JAMB results and the first-year scores, with many of the candidates failing woefully and being asked to withdraw.

At the same meeting, other vice-chancellors highlighted similar deficiencies in their own experiences. The committees of vice-chancellors and pro-chancellors took the matter to then president Olusegun Obasanjo, the visitor of federal universities, and proposed a second test for those given admission on the basis of their JAMB results.

Obasanjo directed Chinwe Obaji, the federal minister of education at the time to put in place post-UTME. Explaining the move at the time, she said: “We discovered that there was no correlation between JAMB scores and the performance of some of the students when they finally got into the faculties.

"With the approval of Mr President we then decided with various stakeholders in the higher education sector to put in place post-UTME. I am proud to state categorically we are able to separate the wheat from the chaff. We brought some measure of sanity, transparency and respectability into the admission process of the tertiary institutions”.

She was, however, silent on the legality of post-UTME.

A retired vice-chancellor who asked for anonymity, recalled that the federal ministry of education brought to the National Assembly a bill creating the post-UTME. He said members of the National Assembly vehemently opposed the bill because of what they described as “extra financial burden” on parents of candidates.

“The lawmakers have never supported post-UTME because they could not influence the outcome of this integrity test organised by the senate of each university. Each time the bill came to the floor of the House it was dead on arrival,” he said.

Implications of the recent verdict

Because of the lack of legal foundation, there are fears among members of the Committee of Vice Chancellors that JAMB may lose its appeal on technical grounds, even if it gets to the Supreme Court.

Some university authorities are of the view that there is a need to engage members of the National Assembly with a view to supporting a new bill to legalise the examination.

Generally, teaching staff are in favour of preserving the post-UTME. However, they worry about the culture of financial inducement among most members of the House.

“In presenting the post-UTME to the National Assembly, the vice-chancellors should appeal to the conscience of the legislators [and argue] that for the survival and integrity of the university system they should support this scheme. If not, the system will produce unqualified manpower which would end up being a disaster for the nation.

“In order to reduce the cost of the post-UTME, JAMB should finance this scheme from the registration fees paid upfront by the candidates. This is called cost sharing. At the end of the day, we all need the post-UTME”, said Dr Adewale Suenu from the department of history and international relations, Lagos State University.