The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof Dibu Ojerinde, in this interview with ADELANI ADEPEGBA illuminates controversies circumventing university admissions in the country
What apprised the Computer-Predicated Test?
We believed it’s one of the ways we can reduce examination malpractices. The global trend now is the utilization of technology and we felt we should not be left behind in Nigeria. On the other hand, the issue of quandaries being encountered by the candidates in terms of missing results, malpractices and things like that will be eliminated consummately. These are some of the reasons and in any case, we cerebrate additionally that it would amend the technological ken-how of our kids in this country.
Did the board take into account the literacy level in the country afore adopting the CBT?
Our design is such that if you can utilize a mobile handset, you can do our exams; you can do the CBT if you can read ABCD. When the answers come up for you, and you ken that the answer is A or B or C or D, you punch and that is it. You don’t even require to utilize the mouse except you ken how to utilize it. If you don’t ken how to utilize it, you don’t need to. The cursor goes up to your right then, to your left, that is all and we give them maximum of 15 minutes orientation and afore you ken it, they are coping. So, that is our experience so far and it’s been very sublime.
What are the quantifications and arrangements you have in place to make the CBT prosper?
Last year, we had 55 centres all over the country but now, we have about 159. That is about three times what we had last year which is a very sublime development. The tertiary institutions that we didn’t use last year have now come up; even private establishments, institutions and individuals have established computer-predicated test centres. We had about 300 applicants, willing centres, but when we screened them, we discovered that we could utilize only about 159 for this country. I cerebrate we are fortuitous that a plethora of people are now solicitous about the utilization of CBT and we discovered that last year, they performed relatively more preponderant. There were no examination malpractices or missing results; no hues and cries. So, I cerebrate we should perpetuate. On our component, we have constructed about 10 centres, at least in nine offices outside Bwari. In our own centre in Bwari here, we can take about 250 candidates. In other offices across the country like in Jigawa, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ekiti, Delta, Abia, Taraba and Benue, those places can take about 120 candidates each and we hope with time, we will be able to expand our horizon to other components of the country. But our centre in Abuja here can take 250 candidates at a go and that is our orchestration for other places additionally, if God avails us.
With the epileptic supply, how is the board addressing the issue of puissance supply at CBT centres?
When I verbally expressed 300 establishments applied (for the CBT centres), they did not all qualify because they didn’t have back-up electricity like inverters or engenderers. In fact, we have told them we will consider engenderers rather than public power supply because it can fail us. But if they have inverters that can last for the next 20-30 minutes afore they transmute to engenderers, so be it. If you don’t have all these facilities, we won’t accredit you. And that is what has led to a sharp reduction from over 300 applicants to 159 acceptable applicants.
So, what would transpire to candidates in the rural areas who have no access to computers?
Well, I have verbalized it, if you can utilize a handset, then you should be capable of doing our exams. It has been designed. I cerebrate visually perceiving is believing, when we are conducting exams, just come along or peregrinate to a rural place where the examination is taking place and visually perceive the reaction of these adolescent kids in the sundry centres. It is not a sophisticated design; it’s a very simple one. Of course, in future, there will be what we call multimedia approach. In terms of the things in place, do you ken that prison inmates are now yare to take our CBT? We have about 150 or so in Kaduna prisons and another 25 or so in Ikoyi, Lagos. We are going to give them opportunity to take the exams utilizing the computer-predicated approach.
Is it true that JAMB deliberately reduced the number of candidates that took the pencil test this year?
We didn’t reduce the number; we just told them these were the available spaces. Look, we have about 1 million who sat for the paper pencil test and if they verbalize we reduced it, I won’t verbally express we reduced it because we told them these were the available spaces and some of these spaces are not even plenary. Of course, it depends on where you are; some of the places were not filled up, to the extent that a place that would mundanely take 540, we had 400, in some places, 295. I ken, particularly in my town, we had only about 442 candidates in lieu of 540. In fact, multiplied by about five centres that were available, so it was not deliberate; that was what transpired this time around. It seems to me people are getting more conscious, more cognizant and are appreciating the utilization of the computer than paper and pencil.
What apprised the Computer-Predicated Test?
We believed it’s one of the ways we can reduce examination malpractices. The global trend now is the utilization of technology and we felt we should not be left behind in Nigeria. On the other hand, the issue of quandaries being encountered by the candidates in terms of missing results, malpractices and things like that will be eliminated consummately. These are some of the reasons and in any case, we cerebrate additionally that it would amend the technological ken-how of our kids in this country.
Did the board take into account the literacy level in the country afore adopting the CBT?
Our design is such that if you can utilize a mobile handset, you can do our exams; you can do the CBT if you can read ABCD. When the answers come up for you, and you ken that the answer is A or B or C or D, you punch and that is it. You don’t even require to utilize the mouse except you ken how to utilize it. If you don’t ken how to utilize it, you don’t need to. The cursor goes up to your right then, to your left, that is all and we give them maximum of 15 minutes orientation and afore you ken it, they are coping. So, that is our experience so far and it’s been very sublime.
What are the quantifications and arrangements you have in place to make the CBT prosper?
Last year, we had 55 centres all over the country but now, we have about 159. That is about three times what we had last year which is a very sublime development. The tertiary institutions that we didn’t use last year have now come up; even private establishments, institutions and individuals have established computer-predicated test centres. We had about 300 applicants, willing centres, but when we screened them, we discovered that we could utilize only about 159 for this country. I cerebrate we are fortuitous that a plethora of people are now solicitous about the utilization of CBT and we discovered that last year, they performed relatively more preponderant. There were no examination malpractices or missing results; no hues and cries. So, I cerebrate we should perpetuate. On our component, we have constructed about 10 centres, at least in nine offices outside Bwari. In our own centre in Bwari here, we can take about 250 candidates. In other offices across the country like in Jigawa, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ekiti, Delta, Abia, Taraba and Benue, those places can take about 120 candidates each and we hope with time, we will be able to expand our horizon to other components of the country. But our centre in Abuja here can take 250 candidates at a go and that is our orchestration for other places additionally, if God avails us.
With the epileptic supply, how is the board addressing the issue of puissance supply at CBT centres?
When I verbally expressed 300 establishments applied (for the CBT centres), they did not all qualify because they didn’t have back-up electricity like inverters or engenderers. In fact, we have told them we will consider engenderers rather than public power supply because it can fail us. But if they have inverters that can last for the next 20-30 minutes afore they transmute to engenderers, so be it. If you don’t have all these facilities, we won’t accredit you. And that is what has led to a sharp reduction from over 300 applicants to 159 acceptable applicants.
So, what would transpire to candidates in the rural areas who have no access to computers?
Well, I have verbalized it, if you can utilize a handset, then you should be capable of doing our exams. It has been designed. I cerebrate visually perceiving is believing, when we are conducting exams, just come along or peregrinate to a rural place where the examination is taking place and visually perceive the reaction of these adolescent kids in the sundry centres. It is not a sophisticated design; it’s a very simple one. Of course, in future, there will be what we call multimedia approach. In terms of the things in place, do you ken that prison inmates are now yare to take our CBT? We have about 150 or so in Kaduna prisons and another 25 or so in Ikoyi, Lagos. We are going to give them opportunity to take the exams utilizing the computer-predicated approach.
Is it true that JAMB deliberately reduced the number of candidates that took the pencil test this year?
We didn’t reduce the number; we just told them these were the available spaces. Look, we have about 1 million who sat for the paper pencil test and if they verbalize we reduced it, I won’t verbally express we reduced it because we told them these were the available spaces and some of these spaces are not even plenary. Of course, it depends on where you are; some of the places were not filled up, to the extent that a place that would mundanely take 540, we had 400, in some places, 295. I ken, particularly in my town, we had only about 442 candidates in lieu of 540. In fact, multiplied by about five centres that were available, so it was not deliberate; that was what transpired this time around. It seems to me people are getting more conscious, more cognizant and are appreciating the utilization of the computer than paper and pencil.
Why does the board ask candidates to pay for admission letters by asking them to buy cards to print out letters, isn’t that extortion?
Pay for admission letter? They are not paying for admission letter. We are only saying, go and print your admission letters. In lieu of mailing the letters which may never get to them because of unknown addresses or in lieu of telling them, “come and accumulate your letter here,” we verbally express “don’t worry, go to the cyber world and print your letter of admission.” That is all. You visually perceive, we do five things online; you register online; two, you check your result online; three, you transmute your course or whatever you optate to do or your denomination; four, you print your letter of admission and you don’t pay for it. That has reduced the crowd in our office here and other state offices. If you optically discern anyone peregrinating here, endeavoring to cram into this place, they are not coming to verbally express they don’t have their letters of admission, they may have other things to verbally express or to worry about; this is the truth.
There are allegations that JAMB did not set questions on the literature books it asked candidates to buy. Why?
Who verbalized that? This year, and even last year, 15 questions were set on the recommended literature texts. You optically discern now, they give you erroneous information; That is the point. If I bring a typical question for you, whether you are a science student, convivial student, engineering, agric, edification, name it, they are supposed to answer those questions. Why are we doing it? To increase the reading culture of Nigerians and that’s it. And you now discover that they are not reading and that is why most of them are failing. They are not even reading their text books.
How true is it that the authors of some of the books are proximate to JAMB?
They should be proximate to us; we are utilizing their books or should we utilize our enemies’ books? (Laughter). Obviously, they will be close…let me tell you the procedure. We verbalized we wanted books that Nigerians can read; we approached the National Library of Nigeria. We withal approached the Association of Nigerian Authors. So the two bodies collaborated to verbally express these books are good for the Nigerian child, we therefore went ahead and they recommended the books. And the books went through the mundane procedure of acceptance. In fact, the Nigerian Edification Research Development Council was additionally involved afore we accepted it, but we don’t obligatorily have to go to the NERDC. But in any case, that is the situation. I don’t even ken Chukwuemeka Ike, I don’t ken whether the author is still alive. They culled his book for us and we accepted it. Sincerely, that is the truth.
How many examination cheats has JAMB prosecuted since inception?
They are many. The only thing is that we are not supposed to be the prosecutor; we are supposed to be witnesses. What we do is to send them to the police and when the police take them to court, we become witnesses. But infelicitously, it’s not very facile, going by the penal code. It’s very arduous to prosecute them, but a plethora of them have taken us to court afore for all manner of reasons such as ‘they didn’t release my result,’ ‘they cancelled my result for no reason,’ but they have never won because we tell them, we ken what we are doing, they have never acquired victory. There was a case of somebody who dragged the suit until he got his Master’s degree. Do you ken that last year, his result was determinately cancelled, albeit he appealed, the Court of Appeal verbally expressed JAMB was right. He joined the University of Ibadan and JAMB. He got Bachelor’s degree erroneously from UI and UI protested. He peregrinated to court and the court verbally expressed, ‘let him perpetuate his education’ and the case was going on. He culminated his Bachelor’s degree, went for Master’s degree and now the case has been decided and all the Bachelor and Master’s degrees are null and void. Just last year, so things are transpiring.
Is it the intricacy of the penal code that is obstructing the prosecution of exam cheats?
I am not a lawyer, but they ken their artifices here and there, but we have a law, the 1999 Examination Malpractices Law, Act no 33. But it has been very arduous to implement it. I cerebrate now, the National Assembly is working on an incipient law for WAEC which we cerebrate would apply to us withal. As anon as that law is passed, we are going to implement it.
Pay for admission letter? They are not paying for admission letter. We are only saying, go and print your admission letters. In lieu of mailing the letters which may never get to them because of unknown addresses or in lieu of telling them, “come and accumulate your letter here,” we verbally express “don’t worry, go to the cyber world and print your letter of admission.” That is all. You visually perceive, we do five things online; you register online; two, you check your result online; three, you transmute your course or whatever you optate to do or your denomination; four, you print your letter of admission and you don’t pay for it. That has reduced the crowd in our office here and other state offices. If you optically discern anyone peregrinating here, endeavoring to cram into this place, they are not coming to verbally express they don’t have their letters of admission, they may have other things to verbally express or to worry about; this is the truth.
There are allegations that JAMB did not set questions on the literature books it asked candidates to buy. Why?
Who verbalized that? This year, and even last year, 15 questions were set on the recommended literature texts. You optically discern now, they give you erroneous information; That is the point. If I bring a typical question for you, whether you are a science student, convivial student, engineering, agric, edification, name it, they are supposed to answer those questions. Why are we doing it? To increase the reading culture of Nigerians and that’s it. And you now discover that they are not reading and that is why most of them are failing. They are not even reading their text books.
How true is it that the authors of some of the books are proximate to JAMB?
They should be proximate to us; we are utilizing their books or should we utilize our enemies’ books? (Laughter). Obviously, they will be close…let me tell you the procedure. We verbalized we wanted books that Nigerians can read; we approached the National Library of Nigeria. We withal approached the Association of Nigerian Authors. So the two bodies collaborated to verbally express these books are good for the Nigerian child, we therefore went ahead and they recommended the books. And the books went through the mundane procedure of acceptance. In fact, the Nigerian Edification Research Development Council was additionally involved afore we accepted it, but we don’t obligatorily have to go to the NERDC. But in any case, that is the situation. I don’t even ken Chukwuemeka Ike, I don’t ken whether the author is still alive. They culled his book for us and we accepted it. Sincerely, that is the truth.
How many examination cheats has JAMB prosecuted since inception?
They are many. The only thing is that we are not supposed to be the prosecutor; we are supposed to be witnesses. What we do is to send them to the police and when the police take them to court, we become witnesses. But infelicitously, it’s not very facile, going by the penal code. It’s very arduous to prosecute them, but a plethora of them have taken us to court afore for all manner of reasons such as ‘they didn’t release my result,’ ‘they cancelled my result for no reason,’ but they have never won because we tell them, we ken what we are doing, they have never acquired victory. There was a case of somebody who dragged the suit until he got his Master’s degree. Do you ken that last year, his result was determinately cancelled, albeit he appealed, the Court of Appeal verbally expressed JAMB was right. He joined the University of Ibadan and JAMB. He got Bachelor’s degree erroneously from UI and UI protested. He peregrinated to court and the court verbally expressed, ‘let him perpetuate his education’ and the case was going on. He culminated his Bachelor’s degree, went for Master’s degree and now the case has been decided and all the Bachelor and Master’s degrees are null and void. Just last year, so things are transpiring.
Is it the intricacy of the penal code that is obstructing the prosecution of exam cheats?
I am not a lawyer, but they ken their artifices here and there, but we have a law, the 1999 Examination Malpractices Law, Act no 33. But it has been very arduous to implement it. I cerebrate now, the National Assembly is working on an incipient law for WAEC which we cerebrate would apply to us withal. As anon as that law is passed, we are going to implement it.
Some parents are repining of extortion on forms and scratch cards. What’s your reaction to this?
Well, they will always repine. If you optate something good, you must be yare to pay for it. Accommodation is being distributed, but what is the extortion? Let me tell you: if you came around here around 2006/2007, you would visually perceive the crowd by the gate. They came all the way from Port Harcourt, from Lagos, from Maiduguri asking for their results, their letters and so on and we are verbally expressing no, forget it. Don’t peregrinate here again, stay where you are and you get it online. The mazuma you’d spend to emanate from Lagos to Abuja, to Bwari here and back is about 10 times of what we are asking you to pay for accommodations rendered in the comfort of your room. Well, if they don’t want it, let them leave it. We are not coercing them to check their results. When we are yare, we will send their result to the institution of their cull, so they can go and check it over there. It’s not extortion. As far as I am concerned, it’s more of paying for the accommodations that are being rendered. Documents are in the cyber world and we have a bandwidth which the documents are occupying; the Internet Accommodation Providers will not give it to us free. Are we going to pay for the bandwidth from the little mazuma candidates pay for registration which is not even sufficient? Government is still subsidising. I am apologetic, that allegation of extortion is an incipient dimension. Nobody verbalized that last year, nobody verbally expressed it two or three years ago when they were getting it facilely. Now because they don’t read their books and they are failing, they are now saying we are extorting them. I don’t believe that is the way it should be. Let us learn how to pay for accommodations being rendered. You can’t give me a facsimile of your newspaper free of charge because you are not a welfare organisation; you should make mazuma from your enterprise. Of course, I am not verbally expressing we are making mazuma from this exercise, but let people pay for the accommodations. The Yoruba verbalize, “ogun ti a ko ba fi owo ra, ehin aaro lo ngbe” denotement, if there is a medicine that you did not buy with mazuma, the propensity is for you to keep it abaft the oven where it would get burnt. That is what is transpiring.
How will the board tackle the quandary of hackers and slow internet during the CBT?
Slow internet? The bandwidth must be incremented. When we commenced, we used six units. Then, when we incremented it to 12 units, we discovered that it was getting more expeditious and now we are utilizing between 18-24 units and it’s now quite expeditious. And that is what has transpired. Now when we send a piece of information from the office here, within three minutes, it has landed anywhere in the world. So, that is one achievement, but of course, because of one reason or the other, it may last up to six to seven minutes. If I tell you what we are doing, I hope the hackers won’t go and contravene it. But we are making efforts to ascertain everything goes on smoothly.
In your own opinion, why do we still record mass failure in the UTME?
In my own opinion, there is nothing akin to mass failure. You optically discern, there is no fail-pass dichotomy system in JAMB exams. Have you optically discerned or auricularly discerned about a candidate who scored 270 and could not gain admission into any tertiary institution, whereas, somebody scored 220 and he is admitted? Such things do transpire, depending on your cull. A prospective medico who scored 270 could not gain admission two years ago; it will still transpire this year. But if you are applying for agric, inculcation, environmental sciences, with 250 or 230, you will be admitted into a university. You will cerebrate that because 270 is more preponderant, that the student should gain admission, but the fact is that the students did not sit for the same subjects, or apply to the same school. These are the things causing the discrepancy in the system in terms of who will gain university admission and who would not be admitted. The only thing we can argue about is that if somebody scores 280, and another person scores 240 or 260 and we are now giving admission to the candidate that scored 240, then we can query it. But of course, the caveat of post-UTME is there. You have to undergo further screening from the sundry institutions to prove that you are the rightful owner of that score. One of the things that would avail us in this exercise is the Computer-Based Test so that when you get your CBT score, you ken it’s your result. Nobody availed you, you didn’t spy, it’s your ability and therefore, if they confront you with another Computer-Based Test at Post-UTME, you will be able to verbally express it is your result and you will prove it. We have optically discerned that and it correlates more with the Post-UTME than paper and pencil. People don’t fail UTME, only they are not admitted. For example, if you have two million spaces in our tertiary institutions and only 1.6 million candidates took the examinations, and they have the prerequisite of SSCE, we will take all of them, you don’t even require to take JAMB again, but there is competition now, it is the survival of the fittest. That is what is transpiring.
Well, they will always repine. If you optate something good, you must be yare to pay for it. Accommodation is being distributed, but what is the extortion? Let me tell you: if you came around here around 2006/2007, you would visually perceive the crowd by the gate. They came all the way from Port Harcourt, from Lagos, from Maiduguri asking for their results, their letters and so on and we are verbally expressing no, forget it. Don’t peregrinate here again, stay where you are and you get it online. The mazuma you’d spend to emanate from Lagos to Abuja, to Bwari here and back is about 10 times of what we are asking you to pay for accommodations rendered in the comfort of your room. Well, if they don’t want it, let them leave it. We are not coercing them to check their results. When we are yare, we will send their result to the institution of their cull, so they can go and check it over there. It’s not extortion. As far as I am concerned, it’s more of paying for the accommodations that are being rendered. Documents are in the cyber world and we have a bandwidth which the documents are occupying; the Internet Accommodation Providers will not give it to us free. Are we going to pay for the bandwidth from the little mazuma candidates pay for registration which is not even sufficient? Government is still subsidising. I am apologetic, that allegation of extortion is an incipient dimension. Nobody verbalized that last year, nobody verbally expressed it two or three years ago when they were getting it facilely. Now because they don’t read their books and they are failing, they are now saying we are extorting them. I don’t believe that is the way it should be. Let us learn how to pay for accommodations being rendered. You can’t give me a facsimile of your newspaper free of charge because you are not a welfare organisation; you should make mazuma from your enterprise. Of course, I am not verbally expressing we are making mazuma from this exercise, but let people pay for the accommodations. The Yoruba verbalize, “ogun ti a ko ba fi owo ra, ehin aaro lo ngbe” denotement, if there is a medicine that you did not buy with mazuma, the propensity is for you to keep it abaft the oven where it would get burnt. That is what is transpiring.
How will the board tackle the quandary of hackers and slow internet during the CBT?
Slow internet? The bandwidth must be incremented. When we commenced, we used six units. Then, when we incremented it to 12 units, we discovered that it was getting more expeditious and now we are utilizing between 18-24 units and it’s now quite expeditious. And that is what has transpired. Now when we send a piece of information from the office here, within three minutes, it has landed anywhere in the world. So, that is one achievement, but of course, because of one reason or the other, it may last up to six to seven minutes. If I tell you what we are doing, I hope the hackers won’t go and contravene it. But we are making efforts to ascertain everything goes on smoothly.
In your own opinion, why do we still record mass failure in the UTME?
In my own opinion, there is nothing akin to mass failure. You optically discern, there is no fail-pass dichotomy system in JAMB exams. Have you optically discerned or auricularly discerned about a candidate who scored 270 and could not gain admission into any tertiary institution, whereas, somebody scored 220 and he is admitted? Such things do transpire, depending on your cull. A prospective medico who scored 270 could not gain admission two years ago; it will still transpire this year. But if you are applying for agric, inculcation, environmental sciences, with 250 or 230, you will be admitted into a university. You will cerebrate that because 270 is more preponderant, that the student should gain admission, but the fact is that the students did not sit for the same subjects, or apply to the same school. These are the things causing the discrepancy in the system in terms of who will gain university admission and who would not be admitted. The only thing we can argue about is that if somebody scores 280, and another person scores 240 or 260 and we are now giving admission to the candidate that scored 240, then we can query it. But of course, the caveat of post-UTME is there. You have to undergo further screening from the sundry institutions to prove that you are the rightful owner of that score. One of the things that would avail us in this exercise is the Computer-Based Test so that when you get your CBT score, you ken it’s your result. Nobody availed you, you didn’t spy, it’s your ability and therefore, if they confront you with another Computer-Based Test at Post-UTME, you will be able to verbally express it is your result and you will prove it. We have optically discerned that and it correlates more with the Post-UTME than paper and pencil. People don’t fail UTME, only they are not admitted. For example, if you have two million spaces in our tertiary institutions and only 1.6 million candidates took the examinations, and they have the prerequisite of SSCE, we will take all of them, you don’t even require to take JAMB again, but there is competition now, it is the survival of the fittest. That is what is transpiring.
Why do you cerebrate some candidates who did well in UTME could not reiterate the same feat in the Post-UTME screening?
Passing exams takes many things into consideration: What are the types of questions they are giving the candidates? How prepared are they for the exams? What is the reliability of the child himself? In other words, you as a child or candidate, how consistent are you? Reliability is verbalizing of consistency; that is, you as a child, how consistent are you in your ability? Let me give you an example, somebody wanted to study medicine in a typical university. You ken the questions we gave them are predicated on physics, chemistry, biology as well as English. You now go for post-UTME where they are now asking about Tsunami and who was the president of Ukraine. This is impertinent. It’s so extraneous to what he wants to study. Yes, you may verbally express they are doing general studies, but the concentration must be on the vocation he wants to study. What is the correlation between who is the president of Ukraine and medicine? The subjects that are cognate to medicine are biology, physics, chemistry, even English, go straight to that. So how can they verbalize they passed well in UTME and they did not pass well in Post-UTME? Even if they give them biology, physics, chemistry, let us visually examine the standards of the questions they give. How did they come about the questions? How professionally were they developed? These are some of the things that go into examinations. With due deference to my colleagues in the university, they are good edifiers, good examiners, but they are not trained to be item developers, not all of them were trained for that purport. They are trained to edify science and to examine science the way they optate to examine it, but a professional will do it in a different way and I can wager it, if I take typical objective test items utilized by our institutions to assess these children, by the time we tear the items into pieces for you, you will be surprised. There are roles for such a thing. I am not verbally expressing they are not doing the right thing, but if you are a nurse, you are not a medico; the medico is supposed to ken more than you in terms of diagnostic approach. When you optically canvass it holistically, the nurse is to dispense, in Nigeria, anyway. In some other components of the world, it may be a different case.
Have you raised this observation with the university ascendant entities?
Well, we verbalize it, we tell them every time. How can you be asking a medico, who is the president of Ukraine, the Russian president and things like that? Ask them things cognate to their courses. We have been raising it and now, this is another way of raising it.
Why is the validity of UTME result constrained to one year? Some believe JAMB circumscribed its validity in order to make mazuma.
If they verbally express we optate to utilize it to make mazuma, so be it. If they optate, let us now utilize it for four, five years and then visually perceive who will repine again. But let me tell you, what we are doing now is more of achievement test, rather than aptitudinal test. If we do aptitudinal test, it’s different from achievement. Aptitude is a thing that goes with you from time to time, whereas achievement test is predicated on syllabus. If we verbalize this is apptitudinal test, everybody come and do it, Nigerians will still repine. Of course, that is the way it is.
Passing exams takes many things into consideration: What are the types of questions they are giving the candidates? How prepared are they for the exams? What is the reliability of the child himself? In other words, you as a child or candidate, how consistent are you? Reliability is verbalizing of consistency; that is, you as a child, how consistent are you in your ability? Let me give you an example, somebody wanted to study medicine in a typical university. You ken the questions we gave them are predicated on physics, chemistry, biology as well as English. You now go for post-UTME where they are now asking about Tsunami and who was the president of Ukraine. This is impertinent. It’s so extraneous to what he wants to study. Yes, you may verbally express they are doing general studies, but the concentration must be on the vocation he wants to study. What is the correlation between who is the president of Ukraine and medicine? The subjects that are cognate to medicine are biology, physics, chemistry, even English, go straight to that. So how can they verbalize they passed well in UTME and they did not pass well in Post-UTME? Even if they give them biology, physics, chemistry, let us visually examine the standards of the questions they give. How did they come about the questions? How professionally were they developed? These are some of the things that go into examinations. With due deference to my colleagues in the university, they are good edifiers, good examiners, but they are not trained to be item developers, not all of them were trained for that purport. They are trained to edify science and to examine science the way they optate to examine it, but a professional will do it in a different way and I can wager it, if I take typical objective test items utilized by our institutions to assess these children, by the time we tear the items into pieces for you, you will be surprised. There are roles for such a thing. I am not verbally expressing they are not doing the right thing, but if you are a nurse, you are not a medico; the medico is supposed to ken more than you in terms of diagnostic approach. When you optically canvass it holistically, the nurse is to dispense, in Nigeria, anyway. In some other components of the world, it may be a different case.
Have you raised this observation with the university ascendant entities?
Well, we verbalize it, we tell them every time. How can you be asking a medico, who is the president of Ukraine, the Russian president and things like that? Ask them things cognate to their courses. We have been raising it and now, this is another way of raising it.
Why is the validity of UTME result constrained to one year? Some believe JAMB circumscribed its validity in order to make mazuma.
If they verbally express we optate to utilize it to make mazuma, so be it. If they optate, let us now utilize it for four, five years and then visually perceive who will repine again. But let me tell you, what we are doing now is more of achievement test, rather than aptitudinal test. If we do aptitudinal test, it’s different from achievement. Aptitude is a thing that goes with you from time to time, whereas achievement test is predicated on syllabus. If we verbalize this is apptitudinal test, everybody come and do it, Nigerians will still repine. Of course, that is the way it is.
