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Oloyede
Professor Ishaq Olarewaju Oloyede assumed the headship of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) six months ago. In this interview with IGHO AKEREGHA (Abuja Bureau Chief) and IYABO LAWAL (Head, Education Desk), Oloyede spoke on the ongoing reforms in the organisation, why the scratch card was cancelled and what to expect in this year’s UTME examination, among others.
It has been six months that you came on board. How has the journey been and what have been the challenges?
There are no insurmountable challenges. Of course, in an establishment like this, problems would come and we solve them but there are no major problems that one can say are beyond our capacity. It has been building on what my predecessors have done, somebody ends at a point and another comes on board.
What we have done is to fine tune what is on ground to make our services better for the public. We have taken some very painful decisions like elimination of scratch cards, we know that some people earn a living from sale of scratch cards but that is not the type of life we want to encourage, it is extortion. They buy the card from our office and they sell at exorbitant price to the users. The scratch card has a particular amount, between one thousand and two thousand five hundred and they end up selling the cards four-five times higher. The scratch card has led to massive corruption in the system, as I speak, a number of our staffs are with the police for one corrupt practices or the other and are related to scratch card.
We also believe we could assist the government with a bid to rake in all collectable revenue therefore, we have also eliminated the middleman in the process of rendering our services, as our end users now pay directly to the TSA, that makes the management and monitoring of our revenue easier than the cards.
The second one is about the examination itself, we are not aware of anywhere in the world where you do Computer Based Test (CBT) and there would be no electronic monitoring, we believe that it is an omission on our part which we have now rectified. We are insisting that all our CBT centers must have close circuit cameras, the reason is that if a student or candidate is not caught during the exam, the possibility of been caught after the examination is there and the evidence would also be there. We are also improving on the process by making it more easier, for instance there are services that are hitherto cumbersome; candidates coming to JAMB headquarters saying they want to change their data, regularisation and so on and most of them stay here for days if not weeks, in the process, some of them are extorted while ladies would find themselves sleeping where they are not supposed to but now, we have automated the system such that nobody needs to come to JAMB office, Complete the form online and we can assure that services would be rendered as fast as possible.
We are also considering the timing of the examination, UTME examination normally holds around March but the result would be ready between two and three days but when do we need the results? July/ August and that is why we are giving room for suspicion. If you go on the Internet, you would see people claiming that they could help candidates to upgrade their results. The results are lying fallow between March and July. Now we want to shorten the period in such a way that the time between the examination and when the result would be used would be very short, there would be no opportunity for anybody to even dream about such.
We are also using that opportunity to communicate with examination bodies such as the West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO) and National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to ensure that we do not make our examinations mutually exclusive. Somebody is taking WAEC and wants to take JAMB, due to clash and time; he may have to sacrifice one for the other. We have harmonised in such a way that the period we are going to use for our own examination will not clash with other examination bodies. We have also upgraded our facilities to serve the community better.
We are also looking at making the result we give highly credible and that is why we are in talks with other agencies and improving on the technology and infrastructure we are using.
Recently, JAMB said it is expecting 1.7m candidates to write this year’s UTME examination, how did you arrive at the figure.
That figure I gave was last year’s figure, that was the number of candidates in 2016 and we do not expect less. We expect about 1.5m candidates for UTME and about 200-300 for the direct entry candidates.
With your existing staff strength and resources, do you think you can handle that?
We can, particularly now that we are increasing the capacity of the staff members, we are also bringing in particularly government agencies, who gave the capacity to assist us because this thing is about area of strength, the main vehicle of our service is ICT, either in conducting the exams or releasing results, that is why we are seeking the advise of experts to guide us and also bringing in experts to increase our in house capacity.
There is this general notion that JAMB has outlived its usefulness, what are you doing to build people’s confidence in the examination body
I believe that is all in the past, there is nothing acrimony cannot bring about, so far, the board has performed creditably well but what is happening is that in some cases, you have disagreements between the institutions and JAMB, because ordinarily people wants to bring conflict where none exists.
The law establishing JAMB specifies that the board shall be responsible for the intake into all tertiary educational institutions. Besides, the law also empowers these tertiary institutions to admit because if you do not give such power to tertiary institutions then it is not an institution. But people make allegations that all these tertiary institutions make a lot of money from admission through post-UTME and the question I ask people is tell me of any institution in the world including Harvard and Oxford that does not make money from admission application. It is part of the normal sources of generating revenue for the institutions, what we need to address is whether those institutions are wasting, stealing or properly utilising the money. That they are making money from admission is legitimate for the institutions.
JAMB exists to coordinate what these institutions are doing, rather than fighting over territories, myself and my colleagues- vice chancellors, rectors and provosts have agreed to work together so the acrimony is no longer there, they use our facilities while we also use theirs and we also work harmoniously well. I think those who were making the call were largely voices coming from tertiary institutions prior to my assumption of office but I have not seen one since then because I have met with heads of these institutions and all of us have agreed to work together, where the area of conflict is are unnecessary areas and I think we have ironed out the differences so we have no reason not to work together, even the candidates now benefit the more because they no longer have to go through the stress that they used to go through before they assess our services and I believe that is good for our nation.
How do you hope to handle the issue of placement? 1.7m candidates seeking admission in a year and at the end of the day, only 500,000 or less would get admission. What are you doing about the lifespan of UTME.
In the first leg of your question, been an applicant does not make a person qualify and you also take note that most of those people who applied have no results, they are not qualified while some are awaiting their ordinary level results. When you say 1.7m applicants, at least 50 percent of them do not have the ordinary level at the time of writing the examination and because they do not have this result, even if they score 400 in JAMB but deficient in ordinary level, they would not be qualified.
If you also look at out of these 1.7m candidates, those who would have scores that would be above acceptable scores in JAMB would not be definitely up to that. When you talk of qualified candidates, we have found out that they are less than one million at any given year. If they are less than one million and we have carrying capacity of 834,000, which is the carrying capacity of all the institutions, we would see that while it true that we do not have enough capacity to carry, the gap is not as wide as people are saying.
We are also going to show vividly that the popular notion is not correct, because at the end of the exercise, we are going to call for people who are qualified but who have not been admitted to find out why this is so and the outcome of that study would be very revealing because most of the people including the senate said extend validity for three years.
How?
Examination that we conduct is not an aptitude or certification test but a screening test. A screening test is somebody who has been prima facie qualified but you want to screen due to lack of vacancy so if you extend that for three years, you are going to complicate issues because the examination is not that type of exam that the validity can be extended. We are trying to persuade the senate and I think they would agree with us that even educationists outside the country would make a jest of the country because examination is so sensitive and technical that you cannot just extend the validity.
WAEC or other examination body is not one chance, they don’t just sit for one examination, exams carry 60 percent, continuous assessment carry 40 percent and both are not written in one sitting, but JAMB is just one sitting, it is not an examination that can be extended because it is not designed for that, those who are knowledgeable and informed about examination and evaluation have advised the assembly that it is not done.
Apart from that, if you extend the validity, we do not admit students unless you rank them, it means every year, they must be ranked. Again, the bill that the senate was trying to make a law says once somebody is qualified, he remains so for three years, what is the meaning of qualified? In our own trade here, nobody is qualified until such a person is registered in the university, the fact that somebody has a high score in JAMB does not make him qualified until he is offered admission.
He goes for registration, 30 percent of them would be rejected at the university for not meeting its specification. If you ask him to bank for three years, ignorantly, he would think he is qualified but he is not until he has been screened by the university and found to be suitable. If you now say once somebody is qualified, he is qualified for three years, unless you are going to make the university to screen and give him or her a certificate of qualification. I believe we need to interact with the senators to let them realise that the thing is not practicable; it would create more confusion in the process because students would still have to register every year.
Again, it is not helpful to the student because he is not taking another examination. When a student did not read for three years and you suddenly put him in 100level, there is bound to be problems. The intention is good but the process is wrong, what JAMB is trying to do is to eliminate some obstacles to access. That’s why we are calling fervently on the National Assembly not to go in that direction because the action would be counter productive.
How far has the board gone in the preparation for the conduct of the 2017 UTME
For the UTME this year, we have taken a decision that we are going to commence the sale of the form in the next two weeks, the reason for that is that we are making all arrangements that ought to be made, in terms of payment like I said earlier, it is not going to be any scratch card selling, students would have to pay to access. Unlike WAEC and NECO, we are not school based, we are individual based and our direct clients are the individual students. We are going to conduct the examination in May, we have met with all the examination bodies before fixing the date.
Will students be able to meet up with admission into their choice universities considering the time of the examination
Our results come out within two days, because we keep the results for long, that is why whether in reality or mere perception, people are talking about upgrading so this time around, once our results come out, it will be utilised immediately and there would be no room for any manipulation.
With the elimination of the scratch card, what is the new policy the board is bringing to the table
JAMB is coming up with a devise, Central Admission Processing System (CAPS) that would make the board interface with the institutions online, instead of carrying files around the country with its attendant risks, the process of admission would be concluded online.
Not only that, unlike in the past where you would meet a large number of students in our office with one problem or the other, we have dedicated a desk to that online through what we call ticketing. If you have any problem with JAMB, take a ticket and mention your problem, as the desk officer is attending to it the registrar is seeing the response and he can also respond or intervene at any point and would be able to monitor how fast we respond to the queries of our stakeholders and clients.
Again, another aspect is now that we are not selling scratch cards, how are we going to ensure that the students are not extorted, that is what we are doing through vending machine. If a student buys a form, in order to be sure that he does not pay more than the stipulated N5000 to be charged, we want to know where he buys it. That is why we are not using cyber café or agents, we are going to use the banks and our state offices to enable us identify every candidate, how much he pays where and monitor how many candidates have paid. That would be easy not only for the management and registrar of JAMB to monitor, those who employ us should also have access to monitor what we are doing so that such would also reduce the possibility of abuse. The minister of Education should be able to sit in his office and monitor performance of JAMB and call the registrar to ask questions that is one of the advantages of technology. If we continue to close the whole thing as if it is native law and custom, then we may continue to have problems.
They are no doubt good initiatives but with the problem of epileptic power supply, how do you take care of system collapse, what backup do you have.
Some of the problems we magnify are non existent. 80 percent of Nigerians in any part of the country today have access to mobile phone and one of the sources we are using for registration is the cell phone. The mobile app makes it easier for people. Wherever cell phone can work, our system would work there too. We are not using internet.
We are also encouraging alternative source of power, before you can register a CBT center, we are encouraging them to have solar power, even if they do not have, they would have a back up that we must certify before the examination.
And we are providing our own facilities at the CBT centers, that is one of the innovations we are making. In the past, somebody can go to a village and start to register students for JAMB but that would no longer be possible; we are operating through our own network, all you need do is to register in a place on your laptop, do your biometrics and it is uploaded to us, once there is power here and there is enough energy to transmit, it is done.
Does that mean there would not be special centers
What people call special centers are not designated as such, they become special centers by accident. For instance, if there is only one CBT center in Ibogun or in Ogun state, students from all over would register there, they would choose that place because they know that once they pick it, they are going to that place and they make sure they arrange themselves for the purpose of perpetuating examination malpractice. What we have done this year is that we are not going to allow that, we are going to merge Ibogun with Abeokuta. If there are 20 CBT centres in Abeokuta, when we merge Ibogun, it would be 21, all those who register You can register in Abeokuta and be in Ibogun for the examination, so that would eliminate the issue of one examination center town, and that is what they are using to perpetrate fraud.
Apart from the fact that we are not conducting our examination in those cities that are notorious for malpractices, those that are one city with no problems, we would merge them with a nearby town.
Last year, we were at Bichi village and they were complaining that by the time indigenes of the town wanted to register, there was no more space because people from elsewhere who had a plan of examination malpractice have filled the place. That is why we have standardised the number of CBT centers, in the past, there would be 130 here, 200 there, this time around, we have said every CBT centre should be 250. The reason for that is that we want to automate the distribution of the students.
Would that not also pose a problem of transportation and distance?
What we are going to ensure is that nobody travels for more than one hour, if what we would pay for sanity is for people to have little inconvenience, that is better than our examination not having integrity. People would have to go from one place to the other. We are trying to think Nigeria, talking of what is practicable not for political expediency.
One major issue that makes crime to thrive in Nigeria is punishment, from your records, has there been cases of prosecution and conviction
When I assumed office, one of the reports I got was forged admission and result slip, immediately we announced that such should stop, those who did not were handed over to the police and so far, within the last six months about four persons have been convicted. We handed about five to the police and secured four conviction and now nobody is trying it again, One of those who were convicted met me recently and was saying that he had just returned from the prison after two months due to the report made by JAMB and I asked if he has been reformed, I asked about his prison experience and he described it as harrowing but said he has learnt his lessons and would be sitting for the 2017 UTME.
We have also warned our staffs that whoever allows himself to be used would be dealt with, presently about 10 of our staffs are with police for one misdeeds or the other. The fact that you are working in JAMB does not preclude you from facing the law and that is why if you commit any infraction against the law, we would hand you over to the police. Of course majority of our staffs are law abiding but that has also sent the right signal that nobody is going to indulge anybody, once you violate the law, of course the law would be made to take its full course.
What other measures has JAMB put in place to really tackle admission racketeering
Admission racketeering goes beyond JAMB and we can only do what we are capable of doing, as I speak, we have made information available to security agencies, State Security Service (SSS), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence (NSCD) and they have been tremendously helpful because they have made a number of arrests, prosecuting those who are involved regardless of their status and we believe this would go a long way. We may not be able to eliminate it totally but we are confronting the problem and you would see that it would go down drastically.
But you were once a vice chancellor and your colleagues are in charge now. You even led vice chancellors in Africa as their president, what do you think should be the solution to admission racketeering
To me, I believe racketeering is not limited to Nigeria, it is a global phenomenon but as they address the problem elsewhere, we are also doing same within the country. The only problem in Nigeria is that we do not have enough mechanism for sanction. When a person is 80 percent sure that he would not be caught or if he is caught, he would not be punished, then he would keep committing crime but in a situation where people find out that the possibility of not being caught is very remote, they would be very careful. Many people are not thieves because they steal; they steal because they are thieves.
There is this controversy on who exercises final authority over admission of candidates, is it JAMB or universities
For me, it is neither and it is both. The way I look at it is that JAMB is a referee to ensure equity in the admission process. JAMB does not admit somebody who is not recommended by the institutions, when an institution has recommended a candidate, that person cannot and should not be admitted unless it is approved by JAMB in order to coordinate.
JAMB cannot on its own admit a student, but it can question an institution on why did you leave this candidate and admit another. We are to moderate to ensure justice and standard. It is not to take over the responsibility of the senate or academic board.
Vía The Guardian Nigeria http://ift.tt/2mw0AJM
