The Registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, and stakeholders in the education sector have identified funding and infrastructural gaps as the main reasons for the poor quality of education in Nigeria.
During a radio town hall meeting on the ‘Falling Standard of Education in Nigeria’ organised by the Progressive Impact Organisation for Community Development (PRIMORG), at the weekend in Abuja, Oloyede alluded that a decline in learning, shortage of teachers, and poor infrastructure affect the quality of education citizens get.
Represented by JAMB’s Public Relations Officer, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, Oloyede urged the federal and state governments to ensure the political will to enforce rules and regulations guiding the nation’s educational system, while stressing the need for strict adherence to the Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC) Act, which is designed to improve the school system in Nigeria.
“For the government, let’s see how they can enforce some of these regulations. The UBEC Act clearly states when you should go into primary and then tertiary school. Let the government have the political will to carry out these regulations”, he said.
On the quality of Nigerian graduates produced from universities in the country, Oloyede said: “That some of our graduates are not employable shows the corruption in the system because if someone does not measure up, why should the person he graduated”?.
Oloyede maintained that the country’s education standard is not as bad as perceived despite admitting poor funding and infrastructure were serious problems to quality education. He downplayed the public angst on the failure of candidates during the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME), which saw 77 per cent of them score less than 200 out of 400.
He explained that there is no cause for alarm as the 2024 UTME result was not a true reflection of the ability of candidates and, cannot be a yardstick for measuring the country’s education standard.
“For every candidate that sits for the JAMB exam, they are ab initio qualified to enter the tertiary institution. We are examining candidates because we have much more than we can take, especially in highly subscribed programmes. That is why we are looking for a way of reducing the numbers.
“We don’t interact with the candidates by teaching them what to write, and our examination is a step ahead of the O’Level examinations. You can refer to it as a chance examination because it is not the true test of the candidate’s ability”, Oloyede explained.
A board member of the Civil Society Action Coalition On Education For All (CSACEFA), Abdullahi Sale lamented the neglect of the education sector, saying lack of teachers, poor infrastructure, and corruption are responsible for the falling standard of education in the sector.
He noted that for federal and state governments to address the problems in the education sector, high priority must be placed on primary and secondary schools. In contrast, UBEC education grants must be accessed and judiciously utilised by state governments.
Sale blamed the government’s inability to deflate booming ‘miracle/special examinations centers’ where candidates are assisted to pass examinations for a fee across the country.
Stressing that the government should clamp down on perpetrators of exam malpractice and ensure adequate punishment is meted out, he said: “I agree that the standard of education has fallen. It can’t be the same as what we had in the past. We all know that because of the neglect of the sector. We know the government has not given as much attention as it should.
“With the infrastructure we have, no classrooms, teachers, or desks. How many schools have been built in the last administration? We had the worst minister of education during (Muhammadu) Buhari’s time.
“So corruption and lack of capacity are part of the challenge. We need to work across the entire spectrum of the education sector. We have so many out-of-school children, so UBEC increased their matching grant from N1.3 to N3.5 billion next year, but my worry is implementation”.
Sale called on JAMB to engage the public more often and enlighten citizens on their mode of operation.
On the root causes of poor teaching and learning in Nigeria, educationist Rita Halima Ibrahim said the government, teachers, administrators, and citizens contribute to the falling standard of education, adding that education in the country is experiencing “stagnation”.
Ibrahim asked the government to pay serious attention to education while faulting schools’ curriculum, cautioning, “it’s high time JAMB and all other regulators went back to the drawing board and improved the current curriculum to meet international standards”.
She urged parents to raise their responsibilities and pay detailed attention to the progress of their wards in schools rather than abandoning the task entirely to teachers. She also said that parents should not encourage students who failed class by sorting out (bribing) their teachers; they must not manipulate them to pass examinations.
“For my colleagues (teachers) who tutor children after classes, they should help the parents to make sure the children meet standard,” Ibrahim advised.
The Radio Town Hall meeting series aims to increase citizens’ active participation and involvement and encourage the government to institutionalize the whistleblowing policy.
The programme runs with the support from the MacArthur Foundation.
