A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE JOINT ADMISSION AND MATRICULATIONS BOARD (JAMB) PROGRAM IN NIGERIA
INTRODUCTION
The Nigerian education system as it is today, began to take form in the pre-colonial era with mission- led schools established alongside churches, as the Christian missions expanded (Achinewhu-Nworgu, 2018). Since then, the Nigerian education system has seen several reforms enacted to deal with the challenges that the diversity of ethnicity and religious affiliations bring to the education sector. This logic model focuses on one of the most laudable reforms enacted, called the Joint Admission Matriculation Board.
The Joint Admission Matriculation Board (“JAMB”) is the program set-up by the Nigerian government to oversee the establishment and implementation of a unified examination into higher education institutions in the country as well as place suitably qualified candidates into available spaces in these institutions. The JAMB policy now uses a combination of academic and non-academic considerations like a merit-based and quota system for educationally disadvantaged states to provide greater access to education (Amini & Ndunagu, 2014). These policies were implemented in 1989 and it is very relevant today.
PROBLEM SPECIFICATION
The problem of equity of access to higher education institutions as well as an identified pattern of lower academic performance in Northern Nigeria is the societal problem identified and I shall emphasize on this problem by employing the use of data gotten from different secondary sources but first, a brief history of how this problem came to be.
The Northern part of Nigeria, which has over half of the population of Nigeria, is regarded as having most of the educationally disadvantaged states. This educational disadvantage did not spring up overnight, it happened because of the Islamic system practiced in the Northern part of Nigeria, over the years, which advocated for an Islamic education as opposed to western education. So, when Christianity spread in the south and came with it the pre-colonial education system, the North did not benefit for this educational development and so over the years the gap began to widen, and the lines were clear. This reflected in admissions into universities, and naturally those who got into school graduated and got jobs and this reflected in disproportionate representation of the Northerners and Southerners in the public service. To forestall the wider implications of this on society, the root cause of equity of access to higher education institutions had to be addressed, through this affirmative action which seeks to provide equal opportunities to minorities in government employment and educational institutions as propagated by (Antwi-Boassiako, 2017)
Data from the Statistics of Education, Nigeria shows historical trends of primary school enrollment rate in 1975 at 25% in the north and 77% in the south, while the trend continues as data in 1998 shows 77% in the north and 111% in the south — enrollment rate is the ratio of expected population of secondary school age and the actual population enrolled and in 1998, actual population enrolled exceeded the
expected population, hence 111%. These figures translate to undergraduate enrollment rate of JAMB UTME of 24% from the north and 76% from the south in 1999 (Okobiah, 2002). There is recent evidence of this disparity as shown in the number of applicants into tertiary institutions between 2011–2015, with averagely 22,000 applications from student from the north, as opposed to an average of 60,000 applications from southern student (Annual Abstract Statistics, 2016)
Even today, according to the UNICEF, over 10.5 million children in Nigeria are out of school, and the North has corroborative statistics with only 53% net attendance rate in primary and secondary school (UNICEF Education Overview, 2019). This position is worsened by the currently raging Boko Haram — which advocates for the spread of Sharia law — terrorism in Northern Nigeria and this goes to show that the challenge faced by the northern part of Nigeria decades ago are still relevant today.
POLICY / PROGRAM THEORY
If the cut off marks is reduced for people from educational disadvantaged states and a quota is given to universities to accommodate a percentage of these students in their annual admissions, then there will be an increase in the number of Northerners who are enrolled in higher education institutions in Nigeria. Ultimately, this will lead to an evenly developed society based on equality, it will also lead to peace and security which is important for economic development as there will be reduced ethnic wars and rivalries resulting from a perceived sidelining of the people of the Northern extraction. It is important to highlight that education has a transformative characteristic that if delivered properly, can significantly facilitate economic development. That is why the United Nations picked out education as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of 2030. Education influences economic development, through productivity, population, capital investment and global competitiveness channels. A clear-cut example is by enabling and training a productive labor force who will become private and public industry leaders to drive desired economic development (Onwioduokit, 2020). Furthermore, the findings by Oketch et al. (2014) highlights that higher education has a larger impact on economic growth that historically assumed. The paper created a conceptual pathway showing how inputs — students, policy, funding, faculty — into tertiary education yield outputs — graduates, research output and innovation — and outcome — increased earning, tech transfer, improved institutions, increased productivity — that impact the economy.
PROGRAM DESIGN
Inputs, Activities, Output, Outcomes & Impact
The program has a target population of Northern Nigeria which has the largest ethnic group called the Hausa-Fulani making up about 30% of Nigeria’s population and are predominantly of the Muslim extraction. The entire Northern population is estimated to be over 90million people (World Population Review, 2021). The JAMB program caters to the needs of its staff through adequate training with an increased recurrent expenditure of 3.6 billion naira in the 2021 budget appropriation (Education Budget Analysis, 2021).
The JAMB program provides direct services to the target population by annually conducting the University Tertiary Matriculation Examination, a computer-based test, conducted once a year at
designated test centers. The cost is often borne by students except in cases where states voluntarily decide to pay for students (Akinyoola, 2019). Following the exam, students are allocated to universities based on their scores and available spaces in line with the quota system of 20% allotment to disadvantaged states (Amini & Ndunagu, 2014). Considerations are given to the 19 constitutionally recognized educationally disadvantaged states of Northern Nigeria, as well as the student from these states, irrespective of where they school.
Over the years, the number of enrollees for the exam from the target population has increased, reflecting an increased output. As evidenced in undergraduate admission increment from 18,372 in 1981 to 42,613 in 1991 to 59,829 in 1999 (Okobiah, 2002).
The JAMB policy is geared to reduce the disparity by increasing access to education in Nigeria, which “is one of the countries with the sharpest educational inequalities in Africa” (Ostby et al. 2017) and statistics show that the outcome of the JAMB program is evident and over the years, the trend of number of university enrollments from the northern Nigeria will be the key indicator to the outcome of this program. The primary long-run impact from this program will be economic development arising from the benefits of mass education.
PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION
The Federal Military Government of Nigeria used legal and regulatory instruments to establish and implement the JAMB program. It was promulgated on the 13th of February 1978 by the act no.2 of 1978. This empowered the Board to conduct matriculation examination for entry into all higher education institutions in Nigeria, although it took effect from 7th December 1989, after the initial act was amended in 1988 (JAMB, 2021). There is no strong evidence to explain the time lag between the promulgation and the amendment of the act. The program actors involved in the implementation of the JAMB program were firstly the military government leadership, working closely with the ministry of finance which catered to the managing the funding and the ministry of education that was the middleman between the government and the universities vice-chancellors. It is important to highlight that, since Nigeria moved to a democratic dispensation in 1999 the legislative arm of government and civil society have become active stakeholders in the subsequent amendments to the act, like moving away from the Pen and Paper Test (PPT) to the introduction of a Computerized Based Test (CBT) in 2014 (Akinyoola, 2019). These actors have contributed both human and financial resources to the implementation of the program. It was alluded that the military president of Nigeria at the time General Babangida “poured a lot of money and attention into JAMB such that people at that time felt he was pursuing an ethnic agenda” (Vanguard, 2017). As a result of paucity of data, it is difficult to specify exactly how much was thrown into the implementation of the JAMB program.
CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE PROGRAM Challenges Encountered
There were significant challenges faced in the early stages of the program implementation, it bordered around funding and logistic challenges. Most notably, the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) that was to be used as the medium to achieve the policy goal, was conducted in an unorganized and chaotic manner, characterized by moving of exam centers impromptu causing candidates to miss their exams and further cancellation of other exam centers due to exam malpractice. Also, the federal government did little to commit funding to expanding the capacity of existing universities to increase their absorptive capacity. States in the northern region were not left out either as they failed to increase investments in high schools, to be able to produce enough qualified candidates to get into higher education institutions through this program (Anyanwu, 2010).
As a result of these dissatisfactions with JAMB students of the Northern extraction who were enrolled in higher education institutions embarked on a violent demonstration in 1998 calling for the abolition of the board. The South was not left out either as fought against the program saying that “admissions should be strictly merit based and not on a quota-system as it would reduce the quality of students admitted” (Anyanwu, 2010). These challenges made it difficult for the program to hit the ground running.
Impact Of The Policy And Outcomes
Improvements
The JAMB program has overcome most of the initial challenges it faced at the implementation phase and has improved in several regards. I have highlighted some of these improvements.
Firstly, the JAMB program initially started out using the pen and paper test (PPT) but in has now moved to the use of a computed based test, a more standardized test is currently in use for the exam. (Akinyoola, 2019).
Also the digitization of JAMB has led to timely release of exam results after a maximum of two weeks, as opposed to the previous practice of releasing results after two months. This has also led to reduced incidences of exam malpractices. This is buttressed by Lawal (2019) who attested to this in the Guardian editorial saying that of the 687 Computer Based Test (CBT) Centers, 100 were banned by the board owing to the allegations of malpractice and violation of regulations.
There have been some unintended outcomes from the JAMB program. The JAMB has become a major revenue generating agency for the government of Nigeria. This is according to (Nwafor, 2017) who states that the JAMB remitted 7.8 billion Naira in 2017, a laudable and unprecedented improvement from the 51 million Naira raised between 2010 and 2016.
Equally, the introduction of biometric data capture for students has enhanced the statistical armory on educational information, and this is crucial in education policy formulation for the future (Akinyoola, 2019).
How Policy Should Have Been Designed And Implemented Differently
The evidence put forward by Akinyoola, 2019 asserting that educational institutions in Nigeria admit students with as low as 25% to 40% of the total mark means that some students being admitted into the higher education system in Nigeria are well below average, and this can affect the quality of products
churned out by Nigerian universities as well as even reduce completion rates for those who cannot cope with the challenges of the system. Therefore, it is important for JAMB to redesign its policy to give a foundational program to such students to better ground them in the basic prerequisites before they are fully admitted into undergraduate programs.
Also, currently the north does not have as many students in higher education institutions as the south, and this was one of the primary aims of the JAMB program, to increase the number of northern students enrolled into higher educational institutions through the introduction of the quota system. According to Anyanwu (2010), a total of 113, 162 candidates applied to higher education institutions in Nigeria, and less than 20,000 of these applicants were from the north representing less than 18% of the total applicants, and of these 20,000 only 14,417 students were admitted in the year 1978/79, with the south having 11,641 while the North had 2,776 admitted. He demonstrates that the trend continues today. This goes to question how effective the JAMB policy has been over the years. Clearly not as effective as it should be. There have been calls for the unbundling of JAMB (Akinyoola, 2019)
