Leave Post-UME Examination Alone, Please! —Isaac Asabor

A certain boy gained admission into a federal university with a very high overall score that far surpassed the cut-off point of his proposed course of study. His parents were very proud of him, and hence saw him as a very brilliant child. But alas, it was only the boy that knew how he cheated in the examination hall to get the high score.

Regrettably, the boy became a dullard in the university as he struggled to obtained 40% pass mark in almost all the courses he offered. Given his very obvious poor performance in the university one does not need to conduct an elaborate research to know that he cheated in the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Examinations. This is because he failed to sustain the level of his brilliance in the university.

As a result of his inability to measure up academically, he joined “bad boys” on campus who are into partying, cultism, pimping and underhand hostel accommodation agent and what have you.

He was so notorious within the university community that his lifestyle within the university campus was reminiscent of a typical “Area boy” .

In a civilised country, the question would have been, “How did he gain admission into the university?” This is where the beauty and indispensability of  Post-UME test or interaction comes in. If the boy that is analogically portrayed in this piece had passed through Post-UME interaction, I believe he would have been discovered not to have been fit to be a university undergraduate.

We should not be allowing excellent scores that were fraudulently obtained in WAEC, NECO and JAMB examinations to be deceiving us. There are so many youths who are parading Alpha Scores (ranging from A1-A3) in almost all the subjects they entered for in WAEC examinations but they cannot articulate themselves in both spoken and written English Language. In such disappointing situation, one cannot but wonder if such “impostors” even passed through the four walls of a primary school.

Frankly, one does not need to conduct any research to determine the actual state of our educational system. Assessing our educational past and reflecting on its present state will reveal a yawning chasm. In the past, being a school certificate holder was enough background for one to express himself in both written and spoken English. It was equally enough for one to get his bearings in any chosen career. In the past, the concept or the idea of Post-UME was not necessary as school certificate holders and university graduates actually exhibited appreciable degree of intelligence that truly reflected the scores on their certificates.

It is ridiculous for a candidate that scored, say, 75% in English Language in JAMB examination and A3 in WASC examination to be struggling to score 40% in the Use of English course at level 100 in the university. Worse of all, it is very common seeing Mass Communication undergraduates carrying over Writing For The Media course without blinking their eyelids. To me, it is very abnormal. We should not allow all these abnormalities to be recurring in our educational system.

Given the unprecedented low quality of young school leavers and university graduates in the country, the question at this juncture is, “Should our Legislators be allowed to scrap the post-UME examination or not?”

I would suggest post-UME should remain because of the following reasons:

First and foremost, because of the fast rate at which education is losing its quality, I would, in this piece, suggest that Post-UME should stay. Qualitative education, no doubt give impetus to the overall development of the country. Recently, after the commissioning of projects at the University of Ilorin , the Minister for Education, Professor Ruqayyat Rufai in her support for the post-UME test, said, “I am a university person, and at this time of Nigeria ’s history, we are particularly interested in quality. Quality is what everybody is emphasising on now.”

It is not proper for a candidate to fraudulently obtain very good scores in JAMB, NECO and WASC examinations only to be struggling to get 40% pass mark in courses offered at the university during semester examinations. To me, that is tantamount to gross deception.”

Secondly, cancelling the post-UME examinations is like leaving the door of admission into the universities wide open for every Tom, Dick and Harry to walk through. University is not an “Okrika” market where there is the principle of free entry and free exit. There should be screening for quality. We should be cognizant of the fact that the quality of the input into the production process of any product determines the quality and acceptability of such product.

We should understand that some people are not in the university to learn but to showcase their anti-learning idiosyncrasies. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see a female student, in seductive attire, parading all the meeting points within the university campus for nothing sake other than desperately “enticing” some  skirt-loving undergraduates.

Also, it is no more news to hear paraded armed robbers confessing that they were undergraduates of a particular university.

For God’s sake, it is high time we took our university education with all seriousness. We should not be under-developing the country just because we want everybody to be offered admission into the university. University is just one of the avenues of acquiring education and skills. There are other avenues. The majority of the landlords in the country have never been within the four walls of any university.

If we decide to throw the doors of our universities wide open because of many admission seekers with spurious scores awarded by various examination bodies, then we should be prepared to be harvesting large numbers of half-baked graduates in the next few years.

Personally, I am using this credible and popular medium to appeal to our lawmakers to dispassionately and cautiously look into the issue of the cancellation of the post-UME test or interaction. We should not say because some of our relations were denied admission through post-UME interaction that, therefore,  it should be scrapped.

•Asabo writes from Lagos.