'JAMB has no power to change admission rules after deceiving candidates'

Nigeria's apex union of university academic staff, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has criticized the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) over its controversial decision to redistribute candidates for post-UTME exams.

In a strongly worded statement, the Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, University of Ibadan chapter, Prof. Segun Ajiboye, said the examination body has no power to take the decision.

Ajiboye said JAMB 'deceived' candidates by changing their choices after first allowing them to choose universities during the registration period.

“JAMB lacks the power to change the rules of admission in the middle of the process after deceiving candidates to pick universities, polytechnics and colleges of education as options when it sold out forms to them," he said.

But the head of JAMB, Lagos, Dr. Beatrice Okorie, was quoted as saying the new admission policy was designed to help students secure admissions without hassles and save them from universities that have made the post-UTME a money-making machine.

“If we had not done that, many of these candidates would have fallen prey of the universities’ money-making machine, that is, the post-UTME without securing admission even with their high scores," Okorie said.

Okorie had said candidates can check where they have been reassigned to on the Board’s website from Monday 3rd of August.

In a related development, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, MacJohn Nwaobiala, said the reassignment decision was jointly taken at a stakeholders’ meeting that had parents and others in attendance but the Federal Government had commenced consultation with the aim of identifying where adjustments could be made.