Nigeria Universities Updates

In recent years, admissions into universities in Nigeria have become more competitive and objective. Statistics shows that only about 10 to 15 percent applicants are actually admitted into universities. The reason is because each university must adhere to the quota given to it by NUC (Nigeria Universities Commission). It has been observe that while few students get admitted at their first application, majority others have to apply time and again say up to four times.
There are many reasons why prospective students miss admission every year despite the transparency in the admission process. After a thorough research, interview, observation and experience, I have been able to identify ten major causes of admission failure into Nigeria universities. These include:
1. Lack of Orientation
Many Universities applicants fumble their way through application without formal orientation. By using the trial-and-error techniques of “fumbling successfully”, so many of them fumble their way through universities and courses selection, applications and so on. Granted, few of them manage to succeed but they are destined to have negative experiences. Majority others are faced with the reality of failure.
2. Parents Interference with Children Choice
Many parents have influenced their children taste when it comes to choice of courses and universities. Some parents force their children or wards to go for courses they are never meant for. Some of these children are averagely intelligent and they are asked to go for very competitive courses. Most times they end up no where. Some who even mange to get the admission are later advice to change their course or withdraw.
3. Inadequate Preparation for JAMB
Abraham Lincoln once said “I will prepare myself and wait for my opportunity”. Thousands who failed JAMB would have passed if they avail themselves to many coaching opportunities out there. Because of lack of preparation, majority who sat for JAMB failed or score lower than required.
4. Inadequate Preparation for Post UME
The numbers of students who scale through JAMB in recent years have increased greatly. Sadly though, many of them never made it through post UME. Many students just apply for post UME without formal preparation. The truth is that if you fail to prepare you are prepared to fail. Research shows that the strategies employed by most universities are similar.
5. Errors Associated with Online Registration
There are usually three stages of online registration before admission is completed we have SSCE, JAMB and Post UME> most applicants usually commit error of omission and commission. They may misspell their name, gender, date of birth and other personal information. These errors or discrepancy usually delay their result and sometimes make them miss admission deadline.
6. Missing of Application Deadline and Examination Date
Many students miss out the application deadline for JAMB, Post UME and Post DE. Worse still, some will apply and miss out on the screening date especially for post UME and post DE. JAMB application too can be very frustrating. Most times the website only goes in the night making it difficult for students to apply on time.
7. Failure to Observe Admission Percentage Ratio
At the Eleventh Technical Committee meeting on admission to degree awarding institutions in Nigeria held at the Federal Universities of Minna, Niger State, Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB Prof. Dibu Ojerinde reminded Federal establishments the ratio of 45:35:20 for merit, catchments and educational less privilege states respectively was still in force. He also emphasized the need for universities to follow the stipulated guideline of 60:40 science/Arts ratio. Unfortunately, many students do not observe this admission percentage ratio. They apply to any university without considering their chances of getting the admission.
8. High Competition from Educationally Privilege States
All Western states and some South-east states are educational privilege states. It is a common practice that most families from these areas make sure that all their children and wards attend higher institution. Because of this, application to institutions in these regions is very high. Lack of orientation has made many of them to keep applying to the same school year after year without successes. This problem however can be avoided with orientation about proper attitude to institutions.
9. Choice of Course
Choice of courses plays a major role in causes of admission failure into Nigeria higher institutions. First, is the issue of 60:40 science/arts admission ratio. We also have students who are going for courses they can not pass during post UME. Also, there are some very competitive courses like Law, Accounting, Medicine and Surgery, that there are some specific numbers of students that can be admitted for them. Because of high demand, many who apply for them are never considered for admission.
10. Examination Malpractice.
There are usually penalties for examination malpractice when the person is caught. At SSCE and JAMB level, the result may be withheld or cancelled. Hence, the person may miss application deadline when the result is finally released. The situation is different though for post UME and Post DE. If you are caught that means you automatically miss the admission.

Survey has shown that these aforementioned reasons are the major causes of admission failure into Nigeria higher institutions. Detail explanation has to how a student can eliminate these obstacles is available by joining project “SMS UPDATES”.
Click here on how to join project SMS updates

Popularity: 13% [?]

ANGERED by the Federal Government’s independence to their plight, Nigerian students, on Thursday, in Lagos, demanded the resignation of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

At a rally to conincide with the 49th independence anniverasy of the country, the students, under the aegis of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and Education Rights Campaign (ERC), passed a vote of no confidence in his administration.

They accused him of ambivalence to the current strike by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which had kept the students at home for more than four months.

The students, who converged at the Labour House, the headquaters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Yaba, said, “While it (October 1) should be an occasion to celebrate, it is rather unfortunate that it is another time for the Yar’Adua administration, which cannot point to any achievement since it came to power in 2007, to assure the traumatised Nigerian workers, students and youths of the so-called magical formula of its 7-pointless agenda.”

They said it was shameful, degrading, dishonourable and an insult on them for the president to travel to Saudi Arabia to commission an education institution when his own education sector, from the primary level, to the university level had completely collapsed due to the government’s insensitivity to the plight of teachers, lecturers and students.

“In fact, President Yar’Adua only went to humiliate himself because the whole world, including the country he went to, are all aware of the pitiable state of Nigeria’s education industry,” they noted.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Professor Promise Opkala is the Registrar and Chief Executive of the National Examination Council (NECO). Recently, the council released the results of 2009 Senior Secondary School Examination (SSCE). The results, released 60 days after the conduct of the examination, showed that only 10.7% of the 1.18 million that sat for the examination had five credits, including English and Mathematics, while the results of 32,415 candidates were withheld for alleged examination malpractices. Okpala spoke with Clement Idoko at the NECO headquarters, Minna, Niger State, on factors responsible for the poor results, as well as other issues.

You have just released the results of June/July NECO Examination barely 60 days after its conduct. But in the past, it used to take your council 90 days or more to release such results, what happened this year?

Well, first, I want to point out that it is part of our strife for excellence, enabled by thoroughness and sense of commitment by staff members as well as technological advancement.

The presence of sufficient IT facilities and highly motivated workforce made this feat possible. Really, we can say that we are one of the best in Information and Technology (IT) as far as corporate organizations interested in any public examinations in the country is concerned. It may not be at its best but it still remains the best in the country for now.

We are highly IT compliant, the initiative of going online originated from this establishment. This workforce is highly motivated. For only the computer unit, we have almost about 300 staff and at the peak period during exams they work for 24 hours of eight hours shift with technicians available to service these machines.

With these men and material resources, highly motivated people, and good organization, it is quite possible and we have demonstrated it for us not to keep the results of our clients for unnecessarily long period. The ideal thing really in most countries now is, with the maximum deployment of IT, where exams is supposed to be conducted through IT, you get the results the same day.

Only 10.7 per cent of the 1, 184, 907 of the candidates that sat for the examination were able to make five credits including English and Mathematics. This, of course, is indicative of a mass failure when considering the fact that the two subjects are key to getting admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria today. Are you not worried that over 80 per cent failed at this level?

It is highly worrisome. The result of any examination provides information that can directly be used to tackle the problem of teaching and learning. Exams are a way of taking stock. Exams tend to provide the question, how far have we taught and, therefore, how far have we learnt?

And so, the major lesson, in this particular episode, is hinged on what is happening in the classrooms at this level. Are there facilities. Are teachers highly motivate, are the students ready to learn. Are the students reluctant learners?

How many of them have text books? how many students are even ready to have preliminary exercise books? Because if you have facilities, are the students ready to use them? Are they spending most of their time watching league matches played in Europe and US? Watching home videos, are they even reading the textbooks, even in the literature class? Now the performance of literature is even worse than the English.

So, in the Literature class, how many students have the basic textbooks? From our findings, most literature students do not even have text- books but listen to their teachers read and they ask questions on the little they remember.

So, this is an indication that it is a high time we took a second look at what is happening in schools. Let it not be only that we have a million secondary schools. Let us ask, are they really learning something? Let it not only be that a student will leave his/her parents home and go to school. The parent should ask, you have been going out here everyday what have you learnt?

So, our duty is to provide indicators that the entire school system should be able to use to ask the question, “are we really moving forward; are we really moving?” It is worrisome. And it is also highly revealing, so let us learn from that evidence, let us provide that feed back, let us provide facilities, let us teach well, and let us be prepared to also learn.

If we can do those things, by the time we go back again to assess the situation we are likely to get an improved result.

What can you say is the level of assessment of students and with this kind of mass failure, are we really saying that you did not use the same syllabus provided the schools in setting your questions?

The truth is that most schools do not carry out fair and correct assessments of their students. For instance, in a situation where a teacher or a school returns assessment score of 200 students and they are scoring between 27 and 30 over 30, you don’t need to be a guru for you to know that something is fundamentally wrong.

A school is returning school assessment of 250 students, a teacher just focuses on 27 or 30 over 30. He repeats the same and nobody scores less than 26. So, if you are putting it on percentage the average student scores over 90 per cent in exams. So, I think this is why the external examination body has its relevance. It is like an external auditor. He detaches himself and properly tells you the diagnosis.

This is because examination is like a diagnostic tool. So, we are saying that we should take a second look; you teachers, you said you have taught the topic but look at the answer scripts. Go back and take a second look.

And it is along this line that we tend to prepare what is called the examiners’ report. That is the booklet, the examiners analyse the result and point out areas where they think the teachers should take a second look at. By the time we release the examiners’ report of this particular exam, it will be highly informative.

And our advice is that every school should try and get a copy, so that the subject teacher can take a second look, so that the principals can use it to call the teachers to order, we are working in concert. Do we have laboratories in our school? How do you expect them to pass the science well? Do they have the text books? These are pertinent questions that we must try to answer.

The examination malpractice level dropped by about tree per cent if you look at the number of 1.2million people that registered for the examination. It is encouraging, but what more can be done to reduce the menace to the barest minimum?

The truth is that it dropped basically because we added one or two things. For instance, in the exam this year, we made sure we provided permanent people in the examination halls. We got the cooperation of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and as you know that is a highly structured organisation.

They have offices all over the country. So, their central command directed them to join us. So, for once, in each of the examination hall, we had somebody, a uniform person, not carrying gun, that positioned himself watching the students. I think that must have helped to reduce the misbehaviour of students and teachers.

The previous method was that our staff would visit the schools. So, within the 32 days, they must visit a school three times. So, when our staff were there both the teachers and the students behaved themselves, they knew it was just for a while.

But this time around we got some people, to stay with them. NECO does not have excess staff, so we can’t afford to put people in 11,000 secondary schools. We don’t have that type of staff. This, I think helped tremendously in controlling the incidence of examination malpractice.

We are also thinking about other possible methods. Because year in, year out, we carry out research on what is rampant, and how do we circumvent it. We must be ahead of the school system. I mean ahead of the teachers and students.

However, we are saying that even if we can control centrally, the whole thing lies at the down stream sector. The problem exists mostly at the school levels. This is because at that level, teachers and students may be on one side. The teacher may be feeling that if the students don’t pass, he shares in the blame.

So, they begin to ‘cooperate’. Teachers should be made to understand that they have stopped teaching when we start exams. So they should leave the students alone to answer the questions. For them to go into the hall and begin to teach and begin to ‘cooperate’ with the students is not helpful to the society.

Popularity: 6% [?]

We make this announcement for the benefit of all candidates who have chosen University of Calabar as their First Choice in their application for admission into the University for the 2009/2010 Academic Session. The post-UME screening exercise has been scheduled to take place from Tuesday 13th October to Saturday 17th October 2009.

All candidates who meet the cut-off point scores as indicated against each academic programme in the relevant courses are eligible to participate in the post-UME screening exercise.

There are varied cut-off-mark for each course from 180 to 210. Applicants are advice to visit the official website of Universitiy of Calabar for detail.

Click here to visit their site and for further detail.

REQUIREMENTS
Eligible candidates are required to obtain bank drafts of N2,000 (One thousand Naira only) made payable to the University of Calabar from any branch of the following banks: `
1. Zenith Bank
2. Sterling Bank
3. United Bank for Africa (UBA)
4. Stanbic IBTC
5. Afribank
6. Access Bank
7. Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB)
8. Union Bank
9. First Bank
10. Skye Bank

Bank drafts are to be handed in at the venue of the screening exercise. Under no circumstances will cash be accepted.

Candidates are required to come with the following items for the screening exercise.
a. 3 recent coloured passport size photographs with full names and JAMB registration number written on the reverse side of the photographs
b. 2009 JAMB Examination Result slip showing candidate’s photograph.
c. HB pencil, eraser and ball point pen.

TIME:
Screening of candidates will commence at 8.00 a.m. each day. Candidates who arrive the venue of the examination 30 minutes after the commencement of the exercise will not be screened.

NOTE:
1. Impersonation is a serious offence and anyone caught impersonating will be handed over to the Law Enforcement Agents.
2. Any candidate who fails to take part in the screening exercise automatically loses his or her chance of being considered for admission.
3. No GSM handset, calculators or any other extraneous materials should be brought into the screening hall. Such materials confiscated will not be returned.

Popularity: 13% [?]

The Head of National Office (HNO), West African Examination Council (WAEC), Dr Iyi Uwadiae, has counseled candidates, schools and parents to be more careful in uploading data during registration for the WASSCE as the Council will no longer entertain request to correct errors.

Uwadiae said this at a briefing in Lagos penultimate Friday while announcing the release of the 2009 May/June WASSCE results.

The HNO claimed that candidates deliberately introduce errors while registering so they can make changes, which the Council suspects are mostly fraudulent.

He lamented that despite introducing e-registration to eliminate errors since 2003, candidates still fill in wrong information and later have problems accessing their results.

His words: “One of the reasons why the council introduced online registration for its examinations is to eliminate avoidable errors committed during registration for its examinations. Unfortunately, five years after we commenced online registration for our examinations, candidates and schools have been inundating us with all manners of requests for amendments of errors committed by them during registration.

“We have discovered that some candidates deliberately introduce errors during registration in order to come back and ask for ‘corrections’ to satisfy their fraudulent intentions. I wish to use this platform to strongly advise all schools presenting candidates for the Council’s May/June school examination diets, and the candidates for November/December private candidates’ examination diets, to endeavour to enter correct data and verify them before uploading their entries as the Council intends to put a stop to any request for amendments in future examinations.”

Only 356,981 representing 25.99 per cent of those who wrote the May/June 2009 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) can gain admission into the universities without combining ‘O’ Level results.

Speaking on the performance of candidates, Uwadiae said that they were the only ones that made five credits including English Language and Mathematics in the examination which was written by 1,373,009 candidates nationwide.

He said the result, compared to last year where only 23.5 per cent of the candidates achieved the same feat shows there is a slight improvement in performance. However, he added that the performance was nothing to jubilate about and if subjected to further statistical analysis, may show no improvement.

“The performance is slightly better this year. If subjected to statistical analysis it is possible there will be no difference. We have nothing at hand to jubilate about. If we are talking about 50 per cent making credits in five subjects including English and Mathematics, then I would have put it in my speech and announced that the candidates did well,” he said.

Uwadiae said that the poor performance which has been the case for some years now shows that intervention programmes being put in place to improve quality education are not yielding the desired results. He blamed the candidates, their parents, teachers and the society at large for the poor results

“The performance shows that the factors causing poor results are still there. The intervention being put in place in schools has not manifested in terms of performance. Our research has shown that no learning is taking place neither is there effective teaching. Everyone has a share of the blame. Pupils and their parents have their fault. Pupils don’t read and their parents don’t monitor them. Teachers are not committed. Society itself elevates material things,” he said.

Of the 1,373,009 candidates made up of 755,955 males and 617,054 females, 1,265,090 (92.14 per cent) candidates have their results processed while 107,919 (7.86 per cent) have a few subjects being processed due to errors. Also, 109,201 (8 per cent) candidates have their results withheld because of alleged involvement in examination malpractices.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Luck smiled on 76 indigent students of Kanam Local Council of Plateau state as the Yibaikwal Education Foundation (YEF) gave them scholarships.

Students of the locality studying various courses in tertiary institutions within and outside the state were presented the scholarships last Saturday at Dengi, the council headquarters, by Dr. Abdullahi Yibaikwal Shehu, who runs the foundation.

Shehu said it has been his desire to make meaningful contribution to educational development starting from his local council so as to contribute to human development.

“I observed with interest the kind of suffering our people are going through and I thought what is the essence of life if you cannot help the less-privileged so for the past two years, I started saving in order to give a helping hand to those in need”, he said.

Speaking at the occasion, the chairman of Kanam local council, Dr. Saleh Mohammed represented by his deputy, Sule Kantana, said the gesture was “timely and long awaited.

He appreciated Shehu’s efforts and called on other sons and daughters of the locality to emulate him.

He said government has done much in terms of education by “procuring admission for 22 students in colleges of education, sponsoring under-privileged students in NTI to the tune of N1.6m, paying counterpart funding for UBE community based project” among others.

In a lecture titled: Education for self development” delivered by the Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria, Prof. Olugbemiro Jegede urged that “education should not be given to people as a means of getting a white collar job but for self development” so that “every educated individual could become an agent of societal development because abject poverty and crass ignorance are the bane of our society”.

Responding on behalf of the beneficiaries, Mustapha Abdullahi expressed their appreciation to their benefactor saying “we lack the exact word to use in describing how we feel. All we can say is, thank you so much sir and may God bless you”.

Dignitaries present at the event include the SSG, Nde Samson Dimka, who represented the governor, Minister of Police Affairs, Dr. Ibrahim Lame, Lt. Gen. Jeremiah Useni who was the chairman of the event, Emirs of Kanam and Wase councils among others who also made their contributions to support the Foundation.

Popularity: 5% [?]