by Adedamola Adejobi

It is evident going by the number of people that will be unable to get admission into tertiary institution that we need more tertiary institutions to give more access to Nigerian students.

This year on the 27^th of April, 2013, over 1.8million students sat for Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB), a body saddled with the responsibility of conducting examinations tertiary institutions in Nigeria created in 1975, so as to ensure equity and fairness for all applicants seeking admission.

It is of no doubt that the body has really done well over the past years, and is really getting better every year by getting innovative even with the recent introduction of the Computer Based Test (CBT). All these development are good and responsive to the cry of Nigerians in ensuring a well standardized examination that all could be proud of.

Every year the number of students writing UTME in order to get admitted into the tertiary institution is increasing. According to the Minister of Education Rukayatu Rufai, when she went round to inspect the conduct of the examination in Abuja said that 1.8 million students sat for the exam. She further said if 1 million students pass the examination, only 520,000 will be able to get admission, which is really alarming, meaning that even after working hard to pass the exam, if care is not taken you may have to rewrite the exam if unable to get admission, amounting to shortage on both the students time and waste of scarce resources for the parents that paid for the examination fee, which I believe is still out of reach of poor people.

It is evident going by the number of people that will be unable to get admission into tertiary institution that we need more tertiary institutions to give more access to Nigerian students. It is no doubt that the present government has done well in the establishment of federal universities, which I think should be supported by state governments and private individuals who as the means and not used solely as a means of profit making venture, so as to give access to the common Nigerian students who has worked hard to pass the examination.

Also I will like to suggest that the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) increase the validity year of the examination result from one year to two (2) years like that of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) which is used in USA for admission, which as five (5) years validity, so as to give students that passed the examination the opportunity to use the result in another admission year, because if a student has worked hard and could not get admitted at the end of the day due to failure on the part of the government to provide access for him or her, he or she should not still bear the consequence of paying for that government inefficiency the next year by paying to write the examination again. Or the government create a subsidy scheme for students that passed the UTME that could not gain admission to write the exam for free the following year, which means the government is paying for its failure to create access for students, instead of the students having to pay again for the exam.

On a final note I will urge the government to pay more attention to the educational sector by increasing the budget allocation to the sector so as to finance research in the educational sector, arrest the decay of infrastructures and pay better remuneration to the workers. All this will further increase access to tertiary education and improve the quality of graduates been produced by our tertiary institutions.

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Adedamola Adejobi, Youth Ambassador for the EAN World Congress on Access to Post-Secondary Education is a co-founder of Inxpire.com, a premier Nigeria not-for-profit youth driven organization, which has imparted over 7000 youths, still counting; the benefactors have created a ripple effect by solving social problems through their projects; empowering other youths.

 

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