WHEN Nigerian universities were authorised to conduct their own Unified
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as part of undergraduate
admission process, they also introduced into the scheme a sinister game
known as hide-and-seek. Part of the illegal plot involves massive
financial extortion of prospective students and their parents. On a
scale of absurdity or infamy, this one takes the top prize in the league
of fraudulent practices invented and nourished by corrupt university
administration officials in their determination to rig their own
undergraduate admission system.
Are Nigerian universities
offering admission to the highest bidders? Many prospective students and
their parents are likely to respond in the affirmative. They have valid
reasons to do so. Undergraduate admission places are being traded as
commodities or commercial products. Candidates with lower scores (who
are more financially endowed) are snapping up limited opportunities that
ought to have gone to other candidates who achieved impressively higher
scores in the UTME examinations.
Listen to agonising
stories narrated by parents whose children sat the recent UTME
examinations and who were denied admission despite the high scores they
received. Why should prospective undergraduate students who apply for
places in Nigerian universities be given unnecessary run-around, a vague
way of muddling a process that ought to be transparent in intent and
execution? Merit ought to drive the admission process in our
universities. Unfortunately, it is not the case.
When
parents are regularly denied clear explanations why their children who
achieved high scores in the UTME examinations have not been offered
places in the universities, they succumb to illegal demands for payments
as a backdoor means of securing admission for their children. The
magnitude of this crime is disturbing. It is widespread. It ennobles
corruption.
The increasing adoption of crooked processes
for admitting students into Nigerian universities has sullied the image
of universities and diminished the quality of higher education in the
country. If senior university officials claim ignorance of this
malpractice, it must be because they don't want to hear about it or
because they are direct beneficiaries of the scheme. For now, they have
chosen to adopt the role of the three monkeys that prefer to see
nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.
Why should students
and their parents be subjected to weeks and months of anguish in their
efforts to make sense of university admission selection criteria that
are deliberately mangled, complicated, unclear, unhelpful, unfriendly
and unfathomable? When prospective students make simple requests for
clarifications about the deliberately skewed and crooked admission
process, the typical response is that selection is based on three key
criteria. The first reason is that admission is based on merit, in
particular a student's excellent performance in the UTME examination.
This point has been contested vigorously by students and their parents,
in light of the backroom deals that often result in admission being
offered to students with very low scores.
The second
explanation points to the so-called "catchment area" logic (that is,
students are selected on the ground that they hail from states which are
closely located to the university). The third underlying principle
argues that selection decisions are based on the divine judgments of
heads of departments. In some universities, heads of departments are
automatically allocated a certain quota of the number of students to be
admitted into their departments
Other than merit-based selection, I have strong reservations
about university admission procedures that privilege the selection of
certain students over others, based chiefly on the proximity of the
students' state of origin to their preferred university. If universities
set minimum standards for admission, they must stick strictly to those
criteria. Standards of selection should not be lowered deliberately in
order to accommodate students whose home states and communities are
geographically proximate to the universities. This particular principle
makes nonsense of the philosophy that informs the use of examinations
(UTME or post-UTME) to determine students who are academically qualified
for admission. It is inappropriate for university admission to be
decided on such a hollow argument.
Part of the reason why
the nation has been overburdened with poor quality staff who occupy
senior portfolios in the public service is because, for many years,
federal ministries and departments were compelled to reflect "federal
character" in the appointment of public servants. Rather than drive
Nigeria's economic development, the "federal character" policy has
driven the nation backwards.
The idea that heads of
departments should be allocated a special quota of students to be
admitted into their departments is an abuse of the admission process. It
cannot be defended on sound logic. That rule gives heads of departments
sweeping powers to decide who should be admitted and who should be
denied admission. Owing to the open-ended nature of this privilege, it
is often subject to gross abuses. Heads of departments can make
selection decisions that are inherently biased, including decisions that
are based on anecdotal assumptions rather than evidence tested through a
fair examination process.
It is unthinkable that the
Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) which was instituted
to check growing allegations of corruption among officials of the Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has now succeeded in
cultivating at local university campuses the same evil that it was
designed to eradicate. This is not evidence of progress but
retrogression. It does not promote merit or excellence among students.
It undermines rather than enhances the quality of students admitted into
the universities, as well as the value of education offered to
students.
Corruption breeds further sleazy practices. When
students and their parents pay huge sums of money which are collected
illegally by a clique that operates within the universities, the only
guarantees given to parents and their wards are that receipts will not
be issued and that payment does not constitute assurance that admission
will be the final outcome. Parents and students who make illegal
payments for which they receive no receipts are on their own. There is
no evidence to uphold any claims they might make about payments they
made. Corruption thrives in an environment in which payments are made
but receipts are not issued by criminals who received the money.
The
question must be asked why the Nigerian media, in particular privately
owned and independent press, has kept silent in the face of the
admission scandal in our universities. Editors and journalists cannot
claim to be unaware of the magnitude of the fraud in the university
admission system because parents and students have been complaining
through letters addressed to the editors. If there is anything like
investigative journalism in our society, the ongoing racket in
university admission system should have been exposed. Investigative
journalism in our system has collapsed owing to a range of factors such
as lack of commitment by editors and media owners, inadequate financial
resources to support public journalism projects, failure by news
organisations to protect their journalists, as well as the culture of
complacency in which journalists focus on one story today and abandon it
tomorrow.
Why are men and women of integrity who manage
university education in the country quiet on this disreputable conduct?
The quality of teaching and learning in Nigerian universities has
already deteriorated so badly that overseas institutions no longer
consider the products of our universities as worthy of scholarly
engagement. Now, a new form of fraud has been added to the execrable
image of our universities. Vice-Chancellors of universities and the
National Universities Commission (NUC) must lead in this house cleaning
campaign. They have an obligation to act quickly, unless of course they
have sanctioned the sleazy practice.
It is odd that this
high level of deception and financial fraud are taking place in the
university admission system in a country in which an anti-corruption
agency – the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) – continues
to delude the public that it is doing a fantastic job of catching
corrupt officials at every level of society. If the EFCC wants to catch
corrupt university officials, it should look no further than the victims
of university undergraduate admission.
A rotten education
system will always produce rotten outcomes. Nigerian universities are
sowing today the seeds of poor graduate outcomes for the future. It is a
dreadful experience that must concern everyone who has a stake in
promoting quality in higher education. Many parents and prospective
students have suffered incalculable emotional trauma caused by a system
that promised fairness and transparency but has delivered
discrimination, inequality, favouritism, and nightly anxiety.
Undergraduate admission in Nigerian universities must be based on merit
and nothing else.
