Continues from last week
Judicial support for the inviolate power of the university in academic matters is quite ample. To cite just one relatively recent case, in Magit v. University of Agriculture, Makurdi [2005] 19 nwlr (pt.959) 211, the supreme court of nigeria affirmed the unquestionable discretion of the university in academic matters when in dismissing the appellant’s case the court declared (per, pats acholonu jsc, of blessed memory) “a university is a place of great learning and research. I would view with consternation and trepidation the day the court (or parliament!) would immerse itself into the cauldron of academic issues which is an area it is not equipped to handle….”

Two reasons may have accounted  for the recurrent complaint of a few uninformed persons against the Post-UTME test. The first is that for many years universities’ administrators took a rather passive interest in the process of admitting candidates into their institutions, contrary to what is required of them by the JAMB Act and the statutes establishing them.

Instead, they turned themselves into mere collation centres for the Board in the admission process. This may have erroneously led these set of persons including Senator Lokpobiri to believe that the universities are usurping or interfering with the statutory mandate of the Board by conducting the Post-UTME test.

It is our firm view that the test is fully in conformity with the “guidelines approved for each institution by its proprietor or other competent authority”, one of which requirements the Board is to take account of under section 5(1)(c)(ii) of the JAMB Act to place or admit a qualified candidate in a tertiary institution.

As a matter of fact, pursuant to this provision, the University of Benin Senate has since the institution of the test continued to set out such guidelines from time to time with a view to fine-tuning the exercise to make it more qualitative.

The second reason is the wrong steps taken by some universities at the start of the Post-UTME test to discard the UTME scores obtained by candidates and resort only to the outcome of the test in placing them into the institutions.

Happily, in order to redress the obvious illegality of that practice, the Federal Ministry of Education again in conjunction with other stakeholders including JAMB, NUC and the AVNU has since worked out an acceptable template by which candidates who are successful in the UTME (with score of 200 and above) are subjected to verifying aptitude test by their choice of universities the result of which is matched with the candidates’ UMTE score to find a mean average for placement in the institutions. What can be more transparent and quality assured?

From the foregoing disquisition, it is our informed view that the Post-UTME test and the subsequent effort to fine-tune it both at ministerial level and at the level of the universities are fully within the framework of the relevant laws on admission into tertiary institutions in the country.

The test is also valid in light of the autonomy of tertiary institutions in the country, notably universities especially in academic matters of which admission forms an integral part.

Indeed, it is correct to submit that viewed from the perspective of the JAMB Act, the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act and the various Acts establishing universities in the country, the Post-UTME test is not only legally justifiable, but a most timely initiative of stakeholders in the tertiary education sector to rescue tertiary institutions from the terrible undergrowth which was threatening to asphyxiate tertiary admission process in the country!