JAMB IS EXPLOITING STUDENTS – Esesien Ita

Every year, about a million students scramble for admission into higher institutions of the country through the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), the sole portal. Before JAMB was established, individual universities conducted their own examinations and admitted students of their choice. A student could apply to two or more schools at the same time, and had the option of making a choice should they be taken in more than one. This system was considered untidy and a waste of resources especially on the part of students. To solve the problem, JAMB was established about 1977. It conducted its first admission exercise in
1978. It harmonized the admission process. Its fees were easily affordable.

Today, JAMB is a different organization, or perhaps the same organization with a different face. It had a human face when it started. Today it has canines and claws to devour the same students they set out initially to protect. Knowing it has monopoly of the admission exercise, JAMB fixes arbitrary charges. For example, JAMB Scratch Card for registration for 2014 exam is four thousand naira (N4,000). Multiply that by the about a million candidates (precisely 1,015,504 registered, but let us forget the pieces). This gives four billion naira (N4 b). When the result is released, the students cannot use the same Scratch Card used for registration to check the result. It is declared invalid by the system. The students have to buy another JAMB card worth a thousand one hundred naira (N1,100). For the about a million candidates, that gives another N1.1billion. More students fail JAMB exam than they pass it. Given the option of Computer Based exam which comes after the result of the Paper Based exam is released, those who could not make Paper Based exam scramble to write the Computer Based exam. Knowing their desperation, JAMB raises the registration fee from four to seven thousand per head. This is for at least 350,000 desperate students. This gives some N2.45billion. The result of the Computer Based exam is known before students leave the exam hall, so they are spared further expenses of just checking to know. When the successful candidates of both exams are invited for Aptitude Test by their respective institutions, they would be required to produce the “original” copy of their JAMB result. For this they cannot use any of the previous JAMB cards which they have bought for the year’s exam. They must buy another JAMB scratch card worth a thousand naira (N1,000) or more. Some further millions that is. And on and on it goes, and has been for years.

Recently Nigerians cried foul over a botched Immigration Services employment exercise that claimed lives, including that of a pregnant woman. Interior Minister, Abba Moro was accused of extorting money from prospective candidates by asking each to pay a thousand naira (N1,000). The Ministry was said to have made millions from the failed exercise, given the hundreds of thousands of candidates who responded from all over the country. The National Assembly came out forcefully and condemned it. The Presidency followed suit. For once, official extortion was openly condemned, and though Abba Moro’s head did not roll as some called for, he accepted responsibility and publicly apologized for it.

Methinks JAMB is doing in a very refined way what Abba Moro did crudely. JAMB’s system is surreptitiously extortionate. When, in the 70s, we gained admission into the university we spent almost nothing. We had our merit and the schools had their integrity. The universities admitted in their individual capacities. That simplified matters for the students, who had a choice to apply or not to apply to any institution. The truth and beauty of the universities conducting their own exams and admitting is that the students have a choice. No one was tied down if they could not make a certain ‘cut-off’ point, even after burning the few naira they had. They could try another institution if they so wished. No school canvassed for students but all did well to admit on merit. There was less tension about admission into tertiary institutions.

JAMB has become a clog in the wheel of students’ admission into higher institutions. It has outlived its usefulness and lost focus. It is time to scrap it and audit its account of years. That it is a statutory body does not insulate it from expiration, especially when its activities have become detrimental to those it was meant to serve. As was done for Abba Moro and Co, the National Assembly should step in here and save our youths from the claws of JAMB. We do not have to wait until someone dies before we act. The time to act is NOW.