As the controversy over the scrapping of the
Joint Admission and Matriculation Board,
JAMB, rages, former Education Minister, Prof
Jubril Aminu, has warned the government
not to tamper with the agency in the interest
of the nation.
Aminu, who made his feelings known in an
exclusive interview with Vanguard, pointed
out that doing away with JAMB would create
a serious challenge to the nation’s tertiary
education system than imagined.
The former minister, who observed that the
problems that gave rise to the setting up of
JAMB were even more pronounced than they
were before the establishment of the
agency, made it clear that any attempt to
jettison the agency could thrown the nation’s
tertiary institutions’ admission process into
unmitigated chaos.
Aminu said,”Nobody should be talking about
scraping JAMB because that would mean the
end of the sanity into the admission process
in Nigeria. Look, if some people have
forgotten, JAMB was formed with serious
thinking with a view to removing the
challenges that confronted the admission
process in Nigeria.
“Among other things, it was to remove the
problem of tribalism, ethnicity and
favouritism that had become rampant in the
admission process and pave the way for a
standardised method of enrol lying students
into tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
“It was not perfect but it has helped
immensely in setting a certain standard and
national leverage in the admission of
students into tertiary institutions in the
country and reduced undue pressure of
parents on the authorities because if your
ward does not pass UTME conducted by
JAMB, there is nothing you can do to get a
place for them.
“So, my candid advice to the government is
that no matter what it is, JAMB should not
be scrapped. If it is not performing
maximally, there are many options open to
the administration to make it to work better
and serve the Nigerian people rather than
scrapping it.
Aminu blamed the problems afflicting the
nation’s education system on poor funding
and poor managements and called for a
change of tactics so as to save the system
from collapse.
According to him, the population of students
in the education system far outweigh the
amount of money committed into funding
education by the government.
The former minister said it was wrong for
many tiers of government to toy with the
salaries and allowances of teachers and still
expect them to perform magic at the same
time.
“If we must get it right in the education
sector, the government must be willing to
commit commensurate funds to meet the
demands of that vital sector of the economy,”
he admonished. 247nigerianewsupdate.com