“Should we, then, return to the old system of institutions conducting admissions independently, as some aggrieved parents now advocate?”

Controversies trailing the last JAMB UTME started ever before the examination itself had begun. Many parents complained that their wards were posted to distances far away from home, necessitating that they incur avoidable costs in these austere times when virtually everyone is desperately trying to cut costs and save every penny they can. Besides, many candidates got the timing of the examination wrong, making them leave home at unholy hours, some as early as 4.00 am, for them to get to their examination centre by 6.30am.

JAMB spokesperson, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, explained that no candidate was deliberately flung far away from home; except the candidates themselves chose such distant places. He also insisted that the examination was to start at 8.00am and not the 6.30am some parents alleged, but because registration must precede the start of the examination, candidates were advised to get to their centres early. But the more Fabian explained, the more furious the controversy raged!

My daughter who wrote UTME seven years ago when she was at the Obafemi Awolowo University’s Distance Learning Institute, Moro was posted to Ila-Orangun (95 kilometres away)! We drove to Osogbo, slept over at a friend’s place, and the next day my friend took us to Ila-Orangun. For me, it was fun. I took the opportunity of what should have been an adversity to visit Oke-Ila, met with the widely acclaimed Kabiyesi of the town noted for his love for education and philanthropy. He took me on a tour of his famous school and, I tell you, it was fun!

When one of my boys also wrote UTME a year later, he was posted to a remote area of Lagos that I had never been to, despite my having lived and worked as a media person in Lagos for decades! It was fun all the same. I drove him there, after which my journalistic instincts propelled me to explore the entire vicinity. But that was then – when the country was saner, safer, and cheaper!

A vastly-improved JAMB
JAMB under Professor Ishaq Oloyede has vastly improved on its operations since then. Every year, JAMB takes proactive steps to be ahead of the many forces working against the seamless conduct of its examinations, blocking every loophole discovered as well as those anticipated. Ensuring that there are enough CBT centres where candidates can sit for their examination, and making sure these centres are up to the required standard, is one headache that JAMB has had to contend with.

Its best efforts notwithstanding, JAMB has not been immune against the dishonesty of candidates and their parents; the corner-cutting of schools and examination centres preparing candidates for JAMB exams; insider abuse and corruption by unscrupulous CBT centres, JAMB staff, and other stakeholders; and the get-rich-quick syndrome which pervade our society. Oloyede recently spoke of plans to construct mega CBT centres while also ceaselessly updating its technology to beat the manipulations and machinations of those who would stop at nothing to compromise its system.

Complaints galore!
As the last UTME was ongoing and the controversies raged, I was guest at a phone-in radio programme where one parent gave a graphic account of what she suffered, leaving home at 4.00am to be able to get to her child’s examination centre at 6.30am! On Sunday as I got to church, two of the youths whom we had sweated over, praying hard for their success the previous Sunday, came complaining that some questions disappeared from their computers! Other complaints include those of computers shutting down before the allotted time while others functioned in fits and jerks.

My bank Accounts Officer had her own tales of anguish: Her girl who last year wrote JAMB in SS2 and scored 269 now scored 159 when, as an SS3 student, she was expected to have performed better! I told her it was technically possible but she was livid that “the JAMB PRO said such candidates were afflicted by the bug of over-confidence!” I also heard from her the fake news that some candidates were receiving new and vastly-improved scores different from the ones earlier credited to them.

Those were the raging controversies before JAMB released the bombshell that 75% of the candidates who sat for the UTME scored less than 200 marks over 400 when, according to my Accounts Officer, the examination was still ongoing! The press statement by JAMB was like pouring petrol on a raging fire! Many parents and candidates did not wait for any further explanation from JAMB or anyone else before concluding that JAMB caused the mass failure. For them, the reported explanation by the Minister of Education that the “mass failure” could be evidence of the improved integrity of JAMB examinations did not hold water.

What I vouched for during the phone-in radio programme – and to everyone that took me up on the matter thereafter – was that Professor Ishaq Oloyede, the JAMB Registrar that I know, will not engage in any “mago-mago” or cover-up but will forthrightly and honestly investigate the avalanche of complaints that trailed the exam and release his findings, regardless whose ox is gored. I am happy that events as they unfolded proved me right!

Oloyede: I take full responsibility
After swift investigations transparently and diligently carried out, Oloyede admitted that there, indeed, were errors and remedial actions were promptly rolled out. JAMB’s motto is: Service and Integrity. This motto emphasizes JAMB’s commitment to “providing fair and transparent admissions process for Nigerian tertiary institutions” In the last UTME, JAMB failed spectacularly, even if not intentionally, on the first leg of its core mandate of service delivery but shone like a million stars on the second leg of integrity. No cover-up. No blame game. No pussy-footing. No mincing of words. No searching for fall guys or scapegoats.

Oloyede carried the cross all by himself. He apologised profusely to the candidates, their parents, everyone impacted, and the entire country. And he did so in tears! That is leadership, which is rare in these climes. As Oloyede addressed the media, I watched Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the JAMB spokesperson, in one corner, head dropped. I don’t envy him at all! The past week must have been a nightmare better imagined than experienced.

Vox Populi
But after JAMB’s apology and remedial measures, what next? Should we thump our chest, clap our hands, congratulate one another, shout “Eureka”, and go from here and live happily thereafter (apologies, Therese Beharrie)? Of course not, because more fundamental problems still bedevil the entirety of our education sector.

Let us examine some comments on social media detailing how deep the rot is: “JAMB results reflect the state of our secondary school teachers, not the students.” “Truth is that teachers are no longer as inspiring as they used to be.” “We are finally reaping the reward of teachers who got 160 in their own JAMB exam teaching our kids!” “Go and see how hungry the teachers of Nigeria are!” “Nigerian public secondary schools have no teachers. It’s the PTA that employs part-time teachers to teach, and they are mostly unqualified teachers.” “Teachers are the only professionals criticized for the tools we didn’t choose, the methods we didn’t create, and the outcomes we cannot control. Why bother to fix a system when you can just blame teachers and then go to sleep?”

Someone, sarcastic, said teachers were responsible for “JAMB’s technical glitches, server downtime and system failure, and questions that disappeared from the computers!” Turning to parents, he said teachers were responsible for parents’ “inactive dedication to their children’s education” and also for forgetting “to come to your homes to monitor your children’s preparation” for their exams. Turning to the students, he said teachers were responsible for students “spending 20 hours on Tik-Tok“ and also for not breaking the students’ heads and fixing textbooks there!

Another said to parents: “You raised frauds… You paid for ‘special centres’ to cheat in WAEC. You taught your children to cut corners… You wanted shortcuts, not knowledge”. To schools and teachers, he said: “You sold souls for profit. School owners hired teachers who could not spell ‘education’. Teachers leaked exams, whispered answers and called it ‘help’. You had a job to build minds. Instead, you built liars. To students, he said: “You choose easy virtues over excellence (and) Tik Tok over textbooks; parties over past questions. You mocked the ‘bookworms’, then prayed for miracles. You can afford to buy data and get iPhones but cannot buy the necessary textbooks…”

To the government, the proverbial big masquerade that dances last, someone said: “You underfunded schools until roofs caved in. You let unqualified teachers flood the classrooms. You ignored ‘miracle centres’ because palms were greased. You talked about tomorrow’s leaders while strangling the schools meant to shape them… Something is definitely wrong (and) this is our collective shame!”

Standards have fallen over time
A group that I know is investigating the collapsing state of education in the South-west. Our children are no longer interested in education. They prefer Yahoo-Yahoo, JAPA, cultism, and politics. They want to get rich quick – and without hard work or industry. Education no longer rates high on their priority list. Why? Certificates without jobs! They watch people climb the social ladder without education. Teachers’ motivation is nil. JAPA has also left our classrooms empty. Many subjects, Mathematics and English inclusive, have no subject teachers. The few teachers available are overworked without commensurate incentives. Ad-hoc teachers employed by PTA and old students’ associations are paid allowances as low as N30,000 per month. It is like there is a deliberate government policy to kill off education.

Measly budgetary allocations to education at federal and state levels yearly fall far below the UNESCO recommendation of between 15 and 20% of total public expenditure. Running costs given to schools are meagre and schools that are not well run cannot produce good results. So, the government, parents, teachers, students, and society at large are all to blame for the parlous state of the education sector and the embarrassing results that our children churn out not only in JAMB but also in WAEC, NECO as well as the lacklustre performance of many of them in our institutions of higher learning.

Conclusion of the matter
We have work to do! Hysteria aside, we should painstakingly examine the facts that only about 20 percent of candidates were affected by the JAMB UTME glitch that we are talking about here. Data released by Oloyede is consistent with poor performance of candidates year-in, year-out in UTME. One reason for this, as some independent observers have discovered, is that a preponderance of the candidates’ computer literacy capacity leaves much to be desired. That you can press the phone does not mean you possess the requisite computer proficiency needed in an examination setting. For example, if you condemn me to using a computer with a mouse, it will take me 10 hours or forever to write a piece that, ordinarily, will take me less than two hours!

Thinking aloud
One: Should we, then, return to the old system of institutions conducting admissions independently, as some aggrieved parents now advocate? I asked Oloyede this same question at a recent media chat and the consensus was that the disadvantages of the old system do not recommend it as a viable alternative to JAMB. Two: To ask Oloyede to resign from his post, again as some aggrieved persons have suggested, is sheer baloney. Granted, according to Adolf Hitler, that human memory is very short, “the receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small (and) their power of forgetting is enormous”, how can we, in our own case, forget so soon the shenanigans of JAMB’s pre-Oloyede era and the massive improvement to JAMB operations under Oloyede? Come off it! Let’s not throw the baby away with the bath-water!

Finally
Only yesterday, a pastor-colleague took me to task over what she described as JAMB’s “all manner of charges”, which she said many parents can no longer afford in these austere times. “To change course, you pay! To change school, you pay! Everything, you pay!”, my pastor-colleague, also a comrade and the spouse of a comrade gone to be with the Lord, charged. That was not her first time of confronting me with this complaint, but yesterday I promised her I would publicly put her views across this time around. A promise not fulfilled is a debt… And a dent on one’s integrity. Since JAMB is bending over backward to keep its own integrity, I think I also should do the needful to keep mine! QED.

turnpot@gmail.com 0705 263 1058

Former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in the New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.