In Nigeria, politics of bitterness and horse-trading happens everywhere. Therefore, when people talk about a class of people in the society being different from others, I often take that with a pinch of salt. Be that as it may, there are certain sectors that should have more pristine and noble values such that they should be above board in such petty and pedestrian tendencies. The exalted class of Vice-Chancellors in the countrys universities should be top of this sector.However, if recent reports about the alleged face-off between the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, personified by its Registrar and Chief Executive, Professor Dibu Ojerinde, and the Committee of Vice-Chancellors over the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, are anything to go by, then the country may be said to be in for it. The two categories, are, to say the least, quite strategic for the growth and development of the countrys education; while the former is responsible for the conduct of matriculation examination into the tertiary institutions, the latter oversee the universities to ensure that good products are turned out of the universities.The genesis of the problem had to do with Ojerindes stance- which is the popular position- about the post-UTME test, which universities now conduct for candidates who have scaled the hurdles of JAMB, subjecting students and parents, again, to severe financial to physical pressure.Ojerinde, being the head of JAMB and by extension the defender of the Act establishing it, had stated at several times, and recently before the Senate Committee on Education, that the post-UTME test negates the Act that established JAMB, adding that the former had assumed an equal standard with JAMB, while pointing out the illegalities of the post-UTME test being conducted by institutions, even as he noted how universities flay the N1000 directive. This writer, like thousands of Nigerians, is with Professor Ojerinde on this, as universities have now become like the Nigerian policemen, extorting money from innocent candidates in a bite-more-than-you-can-chew manner.Ojerinde, though once one of them, and in fact millions of Nigerians, would not be swayed by the VCs defence, probably because they do not see things from the standpoint of universities chiefs whose mandate it is to generate funds and had seen the post-UTME test as the goose that can lay the golden eggs. That, I think is the beginning of a battle that may cause a serious setback to the nations educational sector.Sensing that the JAMB boss was out to spoil their blossoming post-UTME business, the VCs in what can only be described as a reactionary move, have now launched an attack on UTME. According to media reports last week, the Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, was quoted to have told the Senate Committee on Education that it was wrong that the same examination was being used to admit students into all tertiary institutions. The questions which the Senate Committee and in fact all Nigerians should ask the VCs are; where were they when the UTME was introduced and what was their reactions' If UTME had been as bad as they are now making it look, why did universities suddenly change the name of their tests to post-UTME test and not simply stand their grounds about the now perceived inappropriateness of UTME'The answers to the questions are quite simple, had nobody criticised post-UTME test, a device of the VCs, the latter would not have spoken against UTME, which is a brainchild of the current JAMB Registrar. It would have been business as usual, irrespective of the name JAMB changes university matriculation examination to, the VCs would simply have changed the name of their illegal matriculation examination to match. The dangerous effect which this politics of a hen upturns my medicine and I will break its egg will have on the countrys already weak education sector will, however, be colossal.John Ndubuisi, 89D Liberty Road, Ipakodo Ikorodu, Lagos State
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