The Senate hearing on the post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination test has brought the issue of another huge national rip-off to the fore. In the ensuing debate however, university administrators have tried to frame the argument as if it is a matter of the universities versus the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. Nothing can be farther from the truth. While JAMB may be fighting in self-interest to preserve its integrity in matriculation exams, the greater outcry against the post-UTME test is from the candidates and parents and the larger society. On the contrary, those who are in support of the post-UTME test are mostly lecturers and those in the university system. Since the candidates and their parents are the direct beneficiaries of what universities claim to be a quality control mechanism, why are lecturers turning to strangers who are weeping more than the bereaved' Logic presumes that if your services are truly important to a beneficiary who suddenly says he has had enough, you should be pleased to discontinue them. This is not the case with the post-UTME test where the supposed beneficiaries are crying for the service to be discontinued but the servant is insisting it must go on.Having listened to the raison dtre for the post-UTME test from its mother and former education minister, Prof. Chinwe Obaji, it is indeed shameful that those who are supposed to trade in the intellect were so pedestrian on the logic of post-UTMEs founding. If we accept that the integrity of JAMB exam was being breached by candidates whose scores did not match their undergraduate performance, what rate of breach are we talking of' In one report, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, Chairman of the Association (Committee) of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, revealed how, "We caught not less than eight candidates during our last admission screening who confessed at the F Division of the Nigeria Police that they were not the ones who wrote their UTME papers." Given that this happened, what is the percentage of this cheating' There must have been no less than 3,000 candidates invited for the screening that threw up eight UTME cheats. Here we are dealing with a putative 0.27 per cent rate of cheating. If we induct this on a nationwide scale, would it justify a solution that causes so much pain, stress, expenses and corruption which is what the post-UTME is' How does a cure prove more deadly than the disease' Dont universities themselves experience cheating in their own internal exams' Should employers of labour now set up a post bachelors degree screening for all graduates'The bane of our social development as a nation has been in foisting solutions which are worse than the problems they were meant to solve. The Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps which was founded primarily as a conduit for employment has suffered a few attacks from armed vandals and that provides the excuse for them to bear arms. How about the greater problems to be engendered by their being armed including cases of stray bullets' These are cures that are worse than the maladies.Even if all the UTME cheats cannot be known and fished out, if the universities were sincere, they would have built up an objective picture of the malaise from the previous post-UTME tests. By matching candidates UTME and post-UTME performances, the degree of correlation/dissonance would be established. Being academics, supporters of post-UTME test will not need anyone to prod them to do this analysis. My suspicion is that the result would have done violence to their position about widespread cheating. This is why the Senate hearing did not benefit from any marshalling of statistics from previous post-UTME tests.The post-UTME test is a cesspit of corruption in our citadels of learning. But its venal motivations are not its worst implications for the nation. Its worst implication for the nation is in doing violence to the concepts of merit and diversity as national ethos. Before now, testing and admission were in the hands of a national, fairly objective body, JAMB. It wasnt perfect but you could bet that after making allowance for Vice-Chancellors lists, catchment areas slots and few other peculiarly Nigerian leakages, the merit list will be respected for whatever it is worth. This is the niche that makes it possible for a Salisu Asarakawa to be admitted at the University of Lagos based purely on his mental prowess. The merit list promoted diversity and allowed boys and girls from different cultural backgrounds to match up with the strength of their intellect as the only consideration. It had produced nationalists like Prof. Jubril Aminu who went to school at the University of Ibadan and shone brightly. This pre-dated JAMB. Now somebody like that multi-capped professor of medicine, ex-vice-chancellor, ex-minister, ex-ambassador and ex-senator is not likely to judge a national issue from clannish premises on account of his cosmopolitan background through undergraduate studies. With the post-UTME test, the Aminus will never get to the UIs on merit again nor will an Adebayo study at the Ahmadu Bello University on merit. Here then lies the most dangerous implication of the post-UTME test.With the tests, part of the examination and everything about selection, admission and matriculation have become domiciled in the universities who are making a huge trade in it. Only few of them like the University of Lagos still care for the merit list. Most of the other federal universities have slid into an era of 100 per cent catchment/cash-n-carry admissions hitherto unknown to federal universities. If we are building a nation of nationalists, where will they come from' If the damage is done at undergraduate admission stage, the one year NYSC programme cannot do much for national integration. While many university authorities may not have sat down to forge a policy of localising admissions, this is what has happened through the post-UTME test which brings faculty members into contact with their prospects before matriculation. This writer was admitted to the then University of Ife in 1980 without knowing where Ife was on the map. His trip to go and register was his first crossing of the River Niger from the East and he depended on the charity of the bus driver and fellow passengers who assured him the universitys gate is en route Lagos and will not be by-passed for him to disembark. Such was the innocent radicalism of an era being interred by the post-UTME test.If the test was founded to eliminate JAMB cheats as has been alleged, it is not in a position to do that. It relies on JAMB-generated documentations. In one case, where I had a first-hand experience, candidates were asked to furnish their original JAMB acknowledgment before they could be allowed to sit for the test. Their photograph on the JAMB document was to serve as authentication. Since no university is in a position to generate autochthonous documentation on candidates, it stands to reason that if a mercenary had been used to write the UTME, the same mercenary with his picture can escape detection at the post-UTME test. So why put the extra hurdle if it must rely on its discredited predecessor'In this piece, I have chosen not to dwell on the myriad ways universities extort money from candidates in the guise of the post-UTME tests. There are the scratch cards that are never sold at the advertised cover prices; the course changes at fresh charges; invitation of candidates in multiples of the final admissible capacity; the cash-n-carry for lucrative courses and the hide and seek game with web portals. Just like one cannot worship God and Mammon, academic excellence and venality are strange bed fellows. Where ever one is in ascendancy, you can bet the other is gone out the door long ago.Ekunno wrote in from Plot 20 Alexandria Crescent, Wuse II, Abuja, via chudiekunno@yahoo.com
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