Chief Sunny Onuesoke, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Delta State gubernatorial hopeful, has requested for the total scrapping of the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB), describing it as money making machine for the government at the expense of thousands of prospective students.
Onuesoke who spoke while responding to questions from journalists in Asaba, the Delta State capital recently argued that “how can it be justified that out of 1.9 million candidates who wrote the JAMB examination, it is only 8,400 candidates that scored 300 and above?”
He insisted that JAMB has lost its relevance since tertiary institutions still conduct their own entrance examinations for prospective students after writing JAMB examination.
Onuesoke urged the Federal Government to scrap JAMB because the body which suppose to be nonprofit making has become money making machine and as such denies determined and brainy applicants from getting admissions into various tertiary institutions in the country.
“It is annoying hearing JAMB register general bragging about how much he remitted into the federation account amid the mass failure in the examination.
“First and foremost, when it is clear that the whole universities in Nigeria cannot admit more than 400,000 candidates why would JAMB sell forms to about 1.9m candidates to write the examination? Well, people will say it is about competition, but the secret behind is to extort the parents of the prospective students,” he disclosed.
While describing JAMB as “a way of defrauding the masses” and as well an obstacle to gaining admission into tertiary education by millions of Nigerians, the PDP Chieftain suggested that tertiary institutions should be allowed to implement their own standard of admitting qualified students, saying “every university has its own standard requirements that they use to secure admission, why are we still using unified examination?
“I am of the opinion that they should use WEAC and NECO results of the prospective students as means of admission into universities with university common entrance as basic admission. The scores or grade scored in WEAC or NECO should be determine by various universities for admission,” he advised.
