Post UME Examinations: A Final Death to University EducationBy Pius Isume
Nigeria is really a country of sorts. So many bright heads, yet so few returns in terms of technological advancements. So much natural endowments, yet so much poverty in the land. So many policies, yet so much less – implementations! Once upon a time, General Abacha, in trying to sway public opinion, jailed failed bank chiefs, yet today some bank chiefs can’t stop helping themselves to millions of investors funds for private utilization. Chief Olu Falae and his master General Babangida came with a plan to restructure our eating habits and conveniently called it SAP and what they got were energies lost from a dieing citizenry whose today and tomorrow were not given exhaustive consideration during the sudden implementation of that sapping policy. Same with this present government and their incessant fuel increment without a plan for checking the exponential rise such increment would do to other areas of the economy. That is another issue for another day.
From the foregoing, it is apparent that nobody in Nigeria considers formulating policies that are total in concept, total in analysis, total in checks and balances and total in implementation. We seem to have taken a cue from the president who somehow managed to contrive a dubious assertion that there ought to be a morality amongst thieves like he suggested when admonishing Governor Ngige for not abiding by the unwholesome agreement with his aggrieved political godfather Chris Uba to make state government funds available in spite of the governors commitment to his people. Its more like the banning of “Okada” machines in Rivers State between certain stipulated hours by the government because of the highly spurious reason of their being used for robbery operations rather than the more logical idea of improving the security around the metropolis. So we wait the day all vehicles will be banned by the government when robbery incidents with cars become prevalent during certain operational hours as it even is at the moment.
And we have started again! Another grand (?) policy decision made using the abnormal top-down approach and you wonder when all this make belief solutions that yield enormous monsters in the future will end. Little wonder Nigeria at 45 seems to be lost on the national question of sovereignty for all geo-political divisions rather than harnessing the diversity of our ethnicity and religious divide into a global strength for the benefit of all black people in the world! Little wonder the People’s Democratic Party can even conjure to disregard its own constitution and attempt to elect officers and candidates using a “non-elective affirmative” means to showcase its penchant for dictatorial tendencies we all thought had gone with the Abacha era.
The very vexing question of the need for a post UME examination has raised serious concerns for me and other like minded people who rather than congratulate Jamb for the corrupt infiltration of their ranks would rather insist that the Universities as set out today in a corrupt laden country as Nigeria are worst placed to be entrusted with the enormous responsibility of subjecting students to examinations other than that done by Jamb. It is very much in line with replacing an Ngige with Uba as popularized by the President. It is very much like replacing the ballot boxes with electronic counting devices to be operated by fraudulent hands we cannot even see or arrest or prosecute since outrageous high votes would now be blamed on a faulty machine which cannot confess to having being manipulated by an unseen hand from a privileged party!
Certain obvious facts currently known to most Nigerians inform my position on this issue. For one, corruption in the universities today as distinct from the time of Mr. Rueben Abati, whose opinion, “The Revolt of the Universities” informed this rejoinder, is to say the least endemic. Secondly, the argument of half-baked entrants from Jamb holds absolutely no water as universities themselves have corrupted their obligation to the sanitization of the university system which include weeding the seed from the shaft by corrupting, to astronomical levels, the semester and end of session examinations which are mainly their responsibilities. What we see today are the extraction, through criminal means, of all sorts of money by lecturers from brilliant or dull students for each examination taken by students. So rather than weed students who show obvious poor intellectual representations, such students are kept going and finally graduated and the result is what they now wish to pass onto Jamb. How absurd!
Point is, idealistic opinions serve only idealistic purposes for idealistic situations and in idealistic countries. Nigeria, rather unfortunately is not one to be considered idealistic. As I speak, the stories are already out. Some universities take N3,000.00, N7,000.00 and N10,000.00 for students who took a particular university as first choice, second choice and third choice respectively and for an additional exam where the original Jamb forms cost less than N3,000.00. This, to borrow from Prof. Wole Soyinka, is a classic case of “Academic Extortion” geared to enrich the pockets of lecturers and not to satisfy any decaying rot in intakes into universities. As I speak, stories are reeling about students “sorting” for admission in this free-for-all-fight for admission with a going rate of an alarming minimum of N50,000.00 paid by already overburdened parents and you know why? Lecturers, who have been long deep in accepting bribes to pass students are the ones responsible for marking the papers and someone gives such a policy a rousing cheer????
Has anybody asked who vets the scripts marked by this born again godly and saintly lecturers who suddenly assume a position of righteousness from what we all know? Why should I believe them when the recent indications show clearly that their case is even worse than the UME examinations they criticize when their filthy hands can’t stop them selling compulsory handouts where defaulters are victimized and low baked conformist of their extortionist escapades given “honorary marks”? Are we so gullible to believe that this “honorary marks” will not be extended to these new entrants for fulfilling their own part of their unwritten “contractual” bargain of greasing their palms in this trying Nigerian times? If a national body like Jamb with faceless markers of scripts unknown to the students can be so infiltrated, how can we believe it would not be worse in a situation where markers are recognizable and approachable! Has anybody considered that a university that admits its own students would go out of its way to ensuring that at least most students pass through the system just to justify that it qualified only sound entrants? Who really are these lecturers trying to deceive?
The issue of Post UME examination reducing the quota system is vested with insincerity. To my mind, what we are about to do by allowing all comers to seek same exams is to ensure that the universities situated in a state would have an unwritten policy of ensuring that no matter the situation, indigenes from that state would get most of the entry allocations as distinct from the UME examinations where your choice and eventual admission into a university will not be restricted if you beat the cut-off marks specified for a particular course in a particular university. Admissions on Catchments areas are usually second batch based and never on merit to aid students from indigene states while 3rd batches are from universities themselves using whatever criteria they desire. What the universities want to do with their sinister post UME examinations is to eliminate merit and subtly re-introduce tribalism into our university education because students would be too afraid to seek admissions into universities other than from their own geo-political areas.
To recall the pre-Jamb historical days of our fathers with glee when things were done the right way and admissions done with sincerity is begging the question. Like all systems, Jamb was a child of necessity. The level playing field it provided has its great merits and also its shortcomings. To say that universities admit their own students in the Western world is misleading because nations of the world acknowledge their peculiarities, their strengths and their weaknesses based on their diversity in ethnicity and religion and develop acceptable systems in line with all these factors. What we are today and what we intend to be tomorrow cannot be achieved in one swoop because the indices of corruption which negates all growth potentials in this country, are still very much a part of us and fighting a failing system by substitution with an institution neck deep in the failings themselves, smacks of another wild goose chase that will eventually take us nowhere.
We know that UME examinations are rigged but still some bright heads get very good scores and still make merit list. We know that some entrants into universities are not the best but we also know the universities can weed them out during the course of the 4 or 5 year program as the case may be. Can we even guarantee “some bright heads” making the final list from these university-supervised examinations?
Several ways to modify the UME examinations are handy and should be given concise thoughts. For me the way forward is a re-structured UME body where the recognized lapses are taken on board and checked. The issue of examination papers leakage is rampant and not limited to Jamb and should be fought jointly by all stakeholders concerned. How the papers are prepared, from the printing houses to the clearinghouses would have to be reappraised and alternative methods suggested. If qualifying examinations must be done in universities (which I insist should not be attempted), it should only be for those that already passed and have met the qualifying cut-off marks from JAMB and definitely not for all comers. That way, universities can convince me that their intention is only to ascertain the competence of only those recommended to them from JAMB rather than seeking to create an unnecessary diversion and niche for themselves when they can as well fail all the dull students they want to fail during end of semester examinations. It is our collective obligation to protect the rights of our younger ones, kids and family from this scavenging lot. This piece is not to show my disrespect or disregard for the lecturers as I cannot feign ignorance to their sorry plight in the university but certainly this whole charade cannot be done at the detriment of the university system and the wallets of parents, family members and friends badly dripping from excess demands from government and now to be further depleted by the universities in connivance with the Ministry of Education!!!
Pius Isume Port Harcourt Nigeria October 2005 |