I
received the news about the decision of the Joint Admissions and
Matriculation Board to reduce the cut-off mark for candidates seeking
admission into Nigerian universities for degree programmes in the
2015/2016 academic session from 200 to 180 out of a possible 400 marks
with some measure of puzzlement and amazement. I tried to find out what
could have informed such a bizarre decision but could not really get any
plausible explanation from all the news I read or heard. What is
certain is that from October this year or thereabout when the next
academic session would commence, schools are required to implement the
new rule with regard to the admission of students.
One can
only assume that the officials of JAMB were convinced that they were
taking the right step to help a majority of the university hopefuls
whose hopes are dashed perennially having failed to make the previous
pass mark of 200. I unequivocally disagree with this point of view. In
fact, I believe the education sector has just suffered a setback.
The
increase in the failure rates in both the Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination and Senior Secondary School examinations over
the years most certainly calls for concern as well as a long lasting
solution. An analysis of the results of the 2014 UTME shows that out of
the 990,179 candidates who applied for the Pencil-Paper Test, 828,296 of
them scored less than 200 which translates to about 83 per cent failure
rate! The 2013 examinations were even worse as they were marred by
widespread cheating in many centres. Fake answers were distributed to
desperate candidates by scammers. Teachers, invigilators and even
parents assisted candidates to cheat thereby resulting in mass failure,
hence the introduction of the Computer Based Test in the 2015
examinations which has so far reportedly helped to reduce the incidence
of examination fraud.
However, when a gathering of professors
and “learned fellows” adjudge that the only way to better the lot of
prospective undergraduates is by scaling down the pass mark into higher
institutions, one cannot help but wonder what they hope to achieve and
if they stopped to consider the long term implications of their
decision. The Nigerian education system is in troubled waters no doubt,
but lowering standards in the name of increasing candidates’ chances of
gaining admission into higher institutions is not the way to go in
reviving an ailing sector. The resolution reached may result in more
candidates making the cut-off mark and eventually securing admission
into a higher institution of learning, but it will also mean that we are
encouraging mediocrity and a lassez-faire attitude to education in our
future leaders.
Generally, the failure rate in schools and
national examinations is not as a result of tougher examination
questions, rather it is an aftermath of the poor quality of education
which has been on a steady decline through the years. This should not
surprise anyone who is domicilled in these climes. Our undergraduates
spend more time at home than in school due to incessant lecturers’
strikes. Poor parenting and guidance, population explosion, indiscipline
and inadequate funding in particular are also factors militating
against the standard of education in Nigeria to the extent that the
highest ranked university in the country occupies an unacceptable eighth
position on the African continent.
Today, we have teachers and
lecturers who have lost the zeal to impact knowledge in the pupils and
students entrusted to them but rather are more interested in extorting
students through the sale of compulsory handouts and textbooks. This has
in turn resulted in our universities and polytechnics churning out
half-baked graduates in the mould of mechanical engineers who cannot
repair their own cars when it develops a fault and would rather
patronise the roadside mechanic who never passed through the walls of a
school, agricultural science graduates who cannot so much as cultivate
maize all because somewhere along the line we stopped paying the
required attention to a highly sensitive sector.
The decision of
JAMB passes only one message across: We would rather lower the
standards to accommodate mediocrity than tackle the root causes of the
problem and achieve excellence. Already, the crops of young people we
have now are more interested in the virtual world of social media than
any activity that may involve critical thinking or studying. It is not
uncommon to come across high school leavers, undergraduates and even
graduates of reputable universities who cannot string a correct sentence
together either in oral or written English.
While I was
participating in the one-year compulsory National Youth Service Corps
scheme, I remember being approached by a fellow youth corps member who
asked me what “Maiden name” meant. We were in a banking hall where we
had been given a form to fill as part of the requirements for opening an
account where our monthly allowances were to be paid when she came
across the field which required one’s mother’s maiden name to be filled
in and she had absolutely no idea what it meant. I was taken aback that a
university graduate had never heard or come across the term and
wondered how she scaled through school. Now, that’s only one of several
examples. I have since ceased to be amazed at any disappointing or below
par display by any supposed graduate having come across many others.
By
reducing the cut-off mark, JAMB is invariably giving a carte blanche
for laziness and complacency. How are candidates supposed to be
motivated to give their best when we are saying that a 45 per cent pass
mark is good enough to gain entry into the highest level of the
education? If candidates keep failing, do we continue to keep lowering
the standard? At a time when the nation is supposed to be going through
some positive changes in various sectors of the economy, the education
sector being one of the key sectors that will ultimately define our
future as a country surely shouldn’t be left out. Officials of the
Federal Ministry of Education and by extension JAMB should be more
proactive about putting pressure on the government of the day to
increase the percentage of the budgetary allocation to education in the
2016 fiscal year with a view to providing adequate equipment and
infrastructure in schools, as well as ensuring that lecturers are well
paid, so that the incidence of strike actions can be a thing of the past
rather than choosing the easy (but on the long run costly) way out.
Developed
economies like the USA, China, Germany and Japan are driven by both
prudent economic policies as well as technological innovations and
inventions which their students are an integral part of. Students are
supposed to be taught to be solution providers and not just consumers.
This should be Nigeria’s goal if we intend to experience an upward
mobility from our perpetual ranking as a Third World country anytime
soon.
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