New admission policy of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, which recently sparked off protests in parts of the country, has been overruled by the federal government.

This was disclosed yesterday by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Mr. MacJohn Nwaobiala, while interacting with State House correspondents after briefing President Muhammadu Buhari of his ministry’s activities and challenges at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

During its recently-concluded 2015 Combined Policy Meeting, JAMB had adopted a policy whereby candidates of universities with surplus applicants for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, UTME, are reassigned to other universities with lower number of applicants than their capacities.
But noting that the decision was jointly taken at a stakeholders’ meeting that had parents and others in attendance, Nwaobiala noted that the Federal Government had commenced consultation with the aim of identifying where adjustments could be made.

This, he said, was as a result of the dust raised by the development.
The Permanent Secretary further revealed that students who attained the cut-off marks have been directed to go and sit for post-UTME in their schools of first choice since that was the bone of contention.

According to him, “This JAMB thing has been there. As the policy making body, when these issues were raised, they raised in a stakeholders meeting. We normally have what we call the policy meeting. Everything about admission are discussed with parents and other stakeholders at the meeting.

“These are decisions that we collectively took. However, we have a listening hear. We have taken a lot of the issues raised into consideration and we are consulting to see the adjustments we can make here and there.

“The directive has been given. All the students that made the cut-off marks have been told to go and write post-UME examinations in their schools of first choice. After, they can go to their schools of second choice. That has been the bone of contention”.

Speaking about the threat by the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, to withhold results of candidates in 19 states, who wrote the May/June 2015 WASSCE following unpaid examination fees by the state governments, Nwaobiala called on the affected states to redeem their promises.