The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu
Adamu, has issued a statement officially cancelling post-Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examinations (UTME) conducted by universities as entry
requirement for undergraduate degree programmes.
UTMEs are conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for candidates seeking admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, but most universities resorted to post-UTMEs as a way of further ascertaining the academic competence of applicants.
JAMB charged N5, 000 per candidate for computer-based UTMEs
while universities collected between N2, 000 and N60, 000 from admission
seekers as post-UTME fees.
The minister said: “The ban is with immediate effect, and under no circumstance should any institution violate the directive.” He had earlier discouraged post-UTMEs, saying as long as universities had confidence in JAMB, there was no basis for post-UTMEs.
The statement signed by the Deputy Director, Press and Public Relations, Mr. Ben Bem Goong, said emphasis on the ban became necessary to ensure that no stakeholder was “left in doubt as to government’s position on the matter.”
The minister said there was no empirical evidence to show that since the inception of post-UTMEs, universities had been having better quality students, adding that students were still being expelled on a yearly basis for low performance even as they gained admission through post-UTMEs.
He also said he had received reports in which some staff of tertiary institutions took undue advantage of girls in their quest to gain admission into the system while many parents had died in the process of travelling to secure admission for their wards.
The minister said the responsibility for admission into public tertiary institutions lied solely with JAMB and under no circumstance should anybody or institution take over that responsibility by proxy.
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