Institutions Must Have Students From Every State Says Jamb Registrar

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has warned tertiary institutions in the country against arbitrary and unjust processes in this year’s admission procession.
.
It says while institutions reserves the right to admit students, they must justly explain why other candidates were not admitted.
.
The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede stated this Friday, at the Extra-Ordinary 2016 Technical
Committee Meeting on Admissions into First Choice Institutions held at Baze University in Abuja.
.
He said “The institutions have the right to select (their students) but they must be able to explain if someone is not taken.”
.
“Universities have the right to determine the criteria for admission but the criteria must be reasonable,
explicit and must have been published prior to application by the candidates.”
.
JAMB also bemoaned the admission criteria of some institutions saying they are supposed to be universal
and open to all.
.
“Even when you are not having candidates from other parts of the country or one reason or another, you should be able to be national no matter your proprietorship,” Oloyede said.
.
“A situation where you have a federal university with students from only 10 to 15 states of the federation,that shows that the institution is not justifying its
existence. We are insisting that every institution must have students from every state of the federation in order to bring national cohesion, unity and students who will be global products.”
.
He added that JAMB will not initiate or insert any
candidate(s) but will,,ensure that no candidate is
unjustly treated by any institution as JAMB a referee
for justice, equity and standards.
.
According to Oloyede, the “only difference between this
year’s admissions process and what has always been
the practice, is the policy that there should be no
written post UTME test. All other processes remain.”
.
He noted that in their first technical meeting, some
institutions were brazenly arbitrary in their criteria for
admission, and said that as a referee, JAMB will resist
such arbitrariness and illegal introduction of extraneous
factors which were not contained in the published
advertisement made available to the candidates.
.
“A situation where requirements that were not stated
in the brochure to guide candidates suddenly become
applicable during admissions exercise would be
unacceptable. This is because a condition not stated in
the rules cannot be effected to the detriment of law
abiding applicants who applied in accordance with the
institutional provisions in the brochure,” he said.
.
Oloyede maintained that the approved admissions deadline of 30th November, 2016 still stands and that institutions should be able to explain to every Nigerian child who had applied for admissions why he/she was not admitted into his/her institution of choice.
.
“Let me also advise institutions that were yet to update their requirements for the 2017 brochure to urgently do so.

Whatever waivers that might be applicable in institutions should be clearly defined in the brochure,”
he warned.
.
On the measures to sanitize the admission process, he
said that sanitation is a very strong word.

“We will smoothen where things are not done properly by any of the stakeholders in such a way that
we will not only be doing what is right but we will be seen by reasonable people to have done what is right.”
.
“What I believe is that JAMB is there for equity,standard and justice and we are going to work together
with our colleagues in the institutions and I have no doubt that the right thing will be done,” he said.
.
Also, the Vice-Chancellor of Baze University and former Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Prof Tahir Mannan said this year’s admission is going be one in which the choice of universities will be respected and with justice and that students who made their choices will not be dropped indiscriminately.
.
He said “There might have been some problems in the past about students been dropped and discarded; it is for this reason that they want to sanitize the admission
process.”