Tolulope Akande-Sadipe, representing Oluyole Federal Constituency in Oyo, has called on the 10th National Assembly to quickly pass the pending bill on the validity of the United Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
They made the call during an online seminar where the lawmaker argued that the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), should not be a revenue-generating agency for the government.
She argued that UTME, supervised by JAMB, should not be an examination that will be conducted every year.
The lawmaker reiterated that JAMB should not be assessed on the revenue generated to the coffers of the Federal Government but on the quality of examination that it conducts.
Akande-Sadipe said the bill when passed and assented by the president, UTME would have a validity of three years.
The bill, according to the lawmaker, seeks to increase the validity of UTME results from one year to five years. However, it has been reduced to three years.
Making a comparison with examinations across the globe, Akande-Sadipe noted that the tenures/validity of other internationally recognised examinations was between two and five years.
She referred participants to examinations of international standards such as GMAT, GRE, IELTS, TETOFL, SAT, MCAT, PTE, and USMLE.
She said she was passionate about the bill, adding that many were victims of the JAMB yearly test.
Akande-Sadipe argued that a student who has passed UTME should not sit for the examination repeatedly, rather, the result should be valid for about three years.
“I am not asking that the exam tenure be extended in cases where people fail. I am asking that it should be extended when people pass.”
She queried: “In Nigeria, every year you take JAMB and you don’t get into University, you have to repeat JAMB. Why?” She said “168, 613 students scored 200 and above in the 2021 UTME; 236,936 scored 190 and above; 327, 624 scored 180, but less than 100 students got admitted into tertiary institutions. Of the 600 eligible applicants, only about 100 representing 16.67% of candidates got their admission uploaded on the Central Admission Processing System (CAPS).”
“I sponsored the bill, March 16, 2022, on the floor of the House of Representatives, but because of the magnitude of bills that go to the floor of the house, the bill has gotten to the committee level and we are almost there”, she said.
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