Agenda for ‘born again’ JAMB and TETFUND


Prof. Is-haq Oloyede
Finally, the Buhari administration seems set to pay what appears a reasonable attention to the education sector in the country with the recent appointment of new heads for no fewer than 17 agencies in the sector.  This is one sector in which everyone directly or indirectly is a stakeholder. Even at the President’s age when all seems to be over with formal education, he’s still basking in the euphoria of the graduation of a few of his children. But what excitement awaits Nigerians from the anticipated reforms from the new agencies’ heads?
 Most visible in the education sector today is the reality that the administrators of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board have exhausted whatever was left of their creativity. I recall with nostalgia that this same board had been so efficient in the past that it even made us believe in the post office system in the country. At a time JAMB didn’t have an examination centre in my community, I wrote its examination way back in the early 1980s having to travel more than 20 kilometres.  The scores were eventually released to different universities including my own first choice, the University of Ilorin.  There was no unpleasant story. The local mail man, as he had done with several ordinary mails in the past, strolled to our family house one morning to deliver my admission letter. Thus, began the process of my studentship at the nation’s “better by far university” where the newly appointed registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ish’aq Oloyede, was my “senior”. My university is one of the few in the world today which sticks to a set of traditional dates for its most important traditional ceremonies ranging from convocation to matriculation and so on.
The anecdotal bit here isn’t a sheer tale.  As a university teacher today and one that has also had the uncommon advantage of undertaking academic programmes in some high performing institutions with highly rated scholarship and fellowship awards, one cannot but feel for today’s children in schools.  What exactly are they made to get excited with? A couple of weeks back, a 300-level student of  mine had excused herself from one of the classes I teach  so she could go and process her admission letter which had yet to be released by JAMB! Perhaps, she doesn’t even have much reason to blame JAMB having been admitted some would want to placate her.
It is particularly most disturbing that the hope of several ambitious children of this digital generation of a world with no boundaries again, has been shattered by JAMB because some officials simply elected to be unduly callous and unpardonably out of tune with the trend in the sector. How do we explain the deployment of slow and low performing computers for such crucial tests like Universities Matriculation Examination that JAMB conducts?  The unpalatable consequence of this is that some unlucky candidates who are assigned such systems end up with scores below their real capability. Anyone who reads the interviews often conducted for first class graduates of some of our universities will readily recall that some of these students have had to write this examination more than once perhaps not because they didn’t deserve to pass at the first sitting.
Added to the challenge of infrastructure now is the rather absurd confusion which JAMB is currently exhibiting with regard to deciding the parameters of candidates’ admission.  What has happened to the findings of studies conducted on these by our colleagues in the realm of test and measurement? What has happened to the easier option of consultation with relevant experts who may have conducted such studies in the first place? What is the trend in other parts of the world?  The nation cannot continue to agonise over the cluelessness of the past government especially in a sector that determines the present and future rating of the nationals and also in comparison with the nationals of other countries of the world. Time waits for no one.
Having been celebrated by his contemporaries nationally, continentally and globally, the new JAMB boss, surely knows what to do with the human factor in JAMB being a most incorruptible academic and administrator of a most admirable standing,  I dare say.
Not the least needed is the radical strategy to deal with the so-called special centres for JAMB examinations. How did we get here? A JAMB that will surrender its sovereignty to “private ownership” does not deserve taxpayers’ support.  It is shameful enough that the degeneracy that has befallen our public education system has given rise to unwieldy outside-of-school interventions to restore the hope of our ambitious youngsters.  To continue to sustain the extension of the conduct of JAMB examinations to the private arena will be most indecent and unprofessional. Oloyede’s profile which smacks of distinguished patriotism certainly has raised the hope of many of us who have invested in the Nigerian project as students’ union activists and graduated into development enthusiasts and lately scholars.
For the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, it’s been comparable to what the renowned playwright, Ola Rotimi, calls “the slender body of joy…” A great measure of lethargy and territorialism has since permeated its system.  It, indeed today, functions as if it isn’t the outcome of the rigorous vision of members of the community it has been established to serve.
The Fund has indeed done well to advance invaluable support to all government-owned tertiary institutions for physical and human developments.  Some otherwise disoriented scholars have been purged of hopelessness.  It is particularly commendable that under Historian Yakubu, now of INEC, the Fund published a list of some institutions that failed to retire some funds that they had collected. It is however not certain if the Fund still does this.
It is quite interesting that the accolade the University of Ilorin attracts to itself today also derives partly from TETFUND’s support. It will therefore not be out of place for TETFUND to learn from the tradition of high performers like the Universities of Ibadan and Ilorin.  For reasons known only to TETFUND, it stipulates deadlines for submission of applications for conference grants to lecturers. It however does not seem to reckon with dates when such grants may be released to the potential beneficiaries.  These people are made to wait pitiably without explanation.  This becomes increasingly surprising in an age in which computerisation has substantially demystified precision. The new head, Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, should realise that TETFUND has competitors in local and international grant making organisations from which their supposed beneficiaries also benefit without having to genuflect to suggest corruption.  Indeed, hoping the new head has experienced it, the various philanthropic organisations in town relate with their beneficiaries as partners and collaborators.
For JAMB and TETFUND, tertiary education in Nigeria is a common denominator from which a lot is expected. Will they measure up this time with new heads to captain their ships?

Share this

0 Comment to "Agenda for ‘born again’ JAMB and TETFUND"

Post a Comment