A Human rights group, Stand Up Nigeria (SUN) has described the directive of the Federal government scrapping the Post UMTE as a major step in boosting the fight against corruption, noting that the development will end exploitation of parents in the nation’s Tertiary Institutions. .
In a statement issued in Abuja on Saturday which was made available to DAILY POST, the group’s Secretary General, Sunday Attah explained that Post UMTE regime has not only denied huge number of applicants admissions into Tertiary Institutions, but an extortion where revenues ended up in private pockets.
“The practice was an extort admission of seekers under the guise of screening them for competence.”, he said.
He said the examination was also a loophole for corruption that allows tertiary institution staff to admit preferred candidates by technically voiding the UMTE scores.
He said, “We therefore see the scrapping of this controversial examination as a boost to the anti-corruption fight in the education sector as it will end the generation of revenue that does not get to the government coffers”, he emphasised.
The group also commended the Registrar of JAMB, Professor Dibu Ojerinde and his team for bringing about the change that restored the credibility of the examining body, pointing that confidence in the body have been jerked up in recent times.
The statement urged the body to resist pressures to reverse the policy from any quarters, envisaging that pressures by those who have been benefiting from the arrangements may be in the works. “We know that those who benefitted from Post UMTE test will soon mount a campaign for its sustenance or reintroduction. Those influential parents who manipulates the admission process for their children, owners of miracle examination centres, admission racketeering cabals in tertiary institutions and few others may soon put pressure on the authorities to reverse this laudable directive”, it said.
The statement called on the Federal Government to expand educational machineries in order to handle more intakes, saying this will reduce the pressure on the limited available admission spaces as well as monitoring of compliance by tertiary institutions across the country.
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