6th August, 2015
Mr Gunsling Yarlings, the Plateau NUT Chairman, has said that tertiary institutions’ insistence on conducting post-UTME was undermining JAMB’s function as a body expected to conduct the examinations to decide who should be admitted.
“The implication is that the board lacks the capacity to discharge its fucntions,” Yarlings told the News Agency of Nigeria in Jos on Thursday.
He said that JAMB’s UTME was enough to assess candidates for admission into higher institutions, and wondered why there should be other examinations after candidates had already been graded by the Board.
“Post-UTME is tautology; it means the school authorities are undermining the capability of JAMB by conducting their own exams.
“Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), for instance, was established to determine the standards of knowledge and skills required to become registered teachers.
“NUT cannot come up with its set of rules to screen the skills required for teachers or discipline them because it clearly undermines the function of the TRCN and NUT is telling them that they are not capable of discharging their functions,’’ he said.
Yarlings said that JAMB should not be scrapped because as it had always screened out those students whose senior secondary certificates indicate that they were excellent, only to fail to acquire the cut-off marks.
“How can a student score `’As’ in all SSCE subjects only to fail UTME?” he asked.
He objected to allwoing institutions to conduct their entrance examinations because factors like indigeneship and the highest bidder could crop up.