The present Buhari Administration promised us
"change" during their 2015 campaign.
Judging from the dictionary meaning of the word, one would have no choice but to agree with
Minister Lai Muhammad that this administration is hereby living up to all her
promises. Starting from changing the price of tomatoes, to changing the state of our economy, up to
the recent change in our education.
Education in Nigeria is one industry that has collided with
change more times than we can remember, since its inception. Whenever members of the older generation
starts reminiscing about the good old days,
I tend to ask a million questions before I get to understand phrases
like "... back then in standard one. " or "... before I entered
class four". Even younger members
of our society as well succeeds in putting me into confusion nowadays with
words like " basic science " and all what not. I look around our educational system, and tend not to see a system that gives hope
for a better tomorrow, but a system that says "change is constant, even when Buhari is not President".
Its pitiable when someone has a problem but chooses to be
oblivious of that problem, that person has just doubled his ordeal. The Nigerian government does not seem to be
aware of her problems and the problem she should be tackling, instead she is
busy compounding her already existing problems by making uncalculated policies.
Few days ago, I woke up to the jubilating voice of my younger
sister, who is supposed to be preparing
for her post-UTME. "Thank God ooo, no more post-ume exam sha they have
cancelled it". Those words sounded
like the most untrue thing I have heard all 2016. " where did you hear that one?
", I inquired, " on radio na, one minister just announced it now" she
said. The first thing that came to my
head was "that must be Lai Muhammad",
but this " lai" is too big, even for a Lai Muhammad. That notwithstanding, I picked up my phone and slid into
ripplesnigeria.com, to make sense of the
news. I confirmed the news to be true,
but making sense of this news posed in itself a Herculean task.
Our leaders leave the things to be done and face
squarely, the things that do not call
for the attention. I still had to read the direct speech of the minister of
education on the matter, so as to still make a little sense out of this mess, because two people can't be stupid at the same
time. Malam Adamu Adamu said the FG has
complete trust in the exams doled out by JAMB, that another exam should not be
carried out to screen candidates, but institutions are allowed to screen
candidates via any other means possible.
This part of his narrative, I did
not understand. However I would like to
ask, how can a responsible entity trust
exams carried out by JAMB, a JAMB whose
pedigree is on the constant fall like the sagging breast of an ageing woman. Have we forgotten so quickly the reasons why
post-UME or UTME as the case be was set up in the first place, was it not
to check the excess to JAMB due to the outcries of institution heads and
candidates alike, about the mishaps
found in JAMB conducted exams?
Institutions on one hand were crying that JAMB was doling out very bad
graduate semi-raw materials to them, and
they were finding it hard to turn these materials into well baked graduates in
the short four or five year period as the case may be. Candidates on the other
hand were of the opinion that JAMB's mishaps do not reflect their real ability
and is depriving them a sit in the four walls of a higher institution. I ask a
again, has any viable change being made to JAMB that would warrant the FG to
scatter what it once built.
Yes, some changes had
been made, from UME to UTME, from pen and paper to CBT. Are the results of these changes reasons
enough to scrap post-UTME? Especially with the events of the 2016 JAMB exams
still fresh in our memory, the experimental Computer Based Test which was
picked over the traditional pen and paper style we know and have
perfected, showed us that "change
is something we prepare for very well, not to do in a hurry".
Our leaders leave the things to be done and face
squarely, the things that do not call
for the attention. I still had to read the direct speech of the minister of
education on the matter, so as to still make a little sense out of this mess, because two people can't be stupid at the same
time. Malam Adamu Adamu said the FG has
complete trust in the exams doled out by JAMB, that another exam should not be
carried out to screen candidates, but institutions are allowed to screen
candidates via any other means possible.
This part of his narrative, I did
not understand. However I would like to
ask, how can a responsible entity trust
exams carried out by JAMB, a JAMB whose
pedigree is on the constant fall like the sagging breast of an ageing woman. Have we forgotten so quickly the reasons why
post-UME or UTME as the case be was set up in the first place, was it not
to check the excess to JAMB due to the outcries of institution heads and
candidates alike, about the mishaps
found in JAMB conducted exams?
Institutions on one hand were crying that JAMB was doling out very bad
graduate semi-raw materials to them, and
they were finding it hard to turn these materials into well baked graduates in
the short four or five year period as the case may be. Candidates on the other
hand were of the opinion that JAMB's mishaps do not reflect their real ability
and is depriving them a sit in the four walls of a higher institution. 
Some candidates who leave in Lagos were meant to travel as
far as Ibadan or Edo State to take their exams.
Some got to their centers to see that it had being changed, others got
to notice that the computer system allocated to them for the exam had more
issues than the whole of Nigeria put together. Its either the system takes
fifteen minutes to boot, or it shuts
down 30 minutes before the time allocated the candidate runs out. One would
think that these systems had a mind of their own, the way they boot and shutdown at will, maybe they were particularly programmed to
make the candidates fail. Due to the viral occurrence of these mishaps, JAMB was merciful enough to award a crop of
this year's candidates 40 marks for their troubles. A merger 40 marks some
candidates would have made much more than if JAMB had put its house in order.
In some cases that is not peculiar to the CBT
type, candidates tend not to see their results after taking the
exams. I continue to ask, is this the kind of board our Federal
Government intend to rest the sole responsibility of determining the quality of
future graduates who are expected to make Nigeria great tomorrow? Or is the FG in so much of a love affair with
JAMB because they operate at the same level of mediocrity?
When APC came with the change mantra in 2015 and made loud
promises, we bought them, not because we
were stupid, but we wanted to change the
type of leaders that continue to follow the footsteps of shutting down a bad
road, long before the completion of the
paper work of the new road, hereby
leaving us worse than before when they take something they think is bad for us
from us without giving us anything, if not something good. We thought we had
wisely exercised our constitutional rights to vote in elements of change, to come help us set wrong things aright.
Little did we know that these so called elements of change would go ahead and
pull an "Arsene Wenger" on us by making changes in positions we least
expected them, changes uncalled for, just
like Governor El-Rufai who prefers spend billions in giving pupils of Kaduna
state a berger's lunch that won't last four hour in their stomach, than to build good class rooms the children
of today's pupils will still meet and enjoy.
Furthermore, I
remember in 2011, when I gained admission into the prestigious Nnamdi Azikiwe
University, we were made to believe that gaining admission into Unizik was
synonymous to winning a VIP pass to a VIP lounge in Heaven in the same class as
Saint Peter, Prophet Elijah and King
David. We were also told only 4,000 out
of a whooping 40, 000 candidates or more who sat for the school's post-UTME
were counted worthy enough to have being “raptured” into the university as her
students. We happy and proud of where we have come and what we had become. Only
to find out a little later that we had being admitted into a hellhole
prototype, where we had to travel the distance just to receive a lecture and
travel back again almost immediately to receive some more under the romantic
tree because the lecture halls were very limited, that is me putting it mildly. Well after these bitter sweet discoveries we
couldn't wait to graduate and run away as fast as we could. If we had to pass
through that much when 4,000 candidates were admitted, what happens when almost the whole of the
40,000 is admitted at the absence of the
post-UTME. It's important to note that the poor infrastructure we have in our
institutions are not only used by regular students, students of part-time programmes, postgraduate programmes and so on also use
these poor excuses for labs and workshops, such a pity, little wonder we have
what we have as graduates.
Finally, as much as I would love to go on and on about the
uncountable loops hole in this new uncalculated policy, or even give the
government a geographical lecture on what spot a block of lecture hall will be
better suited, I can't, because as they say,
a word of rebuke is enough for a wise President or minister as the case
may be. So until the next time I find something to write about, bye. God bless
Nigeria.
Chukwuemeka U. Chinyere
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