HEARTBEAT:   Post UME Screening Signs and Things Ahead

By UCHE ANUNNE,
Tuesday, October 4, 2005.

THE facts behind the long-drawn agitation by universities for the further screening of successful candidates in the universities matriculation examination (UME) before they finally secure admission are beginning to get desire.

Minister of Education, Mrs. Nora Chinwe Obaji gave the universities the green light to put UME result holders to further test to authentic the validity of the results they carry. They ensure of all eyes in the directive are those with results considered too good. The intent is to make them prove they did not obtain such results through crooked means. Since that ministerial declaration, the universities have been celebrating to the high heavens.

A Vice Chancellor in one of the universities told me during a council meeting that the development is one of the best things to have happened to the ivory towers. In the New Nigerian Weekly of September 24th, I had raised certain fears that are likely to may or create more problems for the process of admission into the universities.

A few weeks after that, those fears are beginning to be confirmed and I vindicated from across the country news have poured in on how the universities now used the window  to buoyed their unenviable economic profile. I restrain from branding it extortion of parents. For now, the fire is burning hard at Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, and University of Nigeria Nsukka students are being charged to sit for the screening.

A certain university in the south is also reported to have set a wide range of fees to different categories of candidates, including those that made the university their first choice, those that made it their second choice, third choice or those that never chose in at all for the last group, the fee is high as 10,000 Naira.

Those charges contradict the position of the Mrs. Obaji who, while bowing to the pressure from the universities warned that the screening exercise should be done at no extra charge on the candidates.

But my Vice- Chancellor friend I mentioned earlier laughed off the directive of the Minister, insisting that it is not possible, given the position of the institutions, and no extra money coming from the government for the screening, for the screening to be done free of charge. I share in his opinion, as the directive by the Minister can be likened to sending a child to fetch live charcoal and a very sharp knife and at the same time charging him to handle the assignment without hurting himself. As observed by Chinua Achebe in Arrow of God we are now witnessing how well the child is farming in the assignment.

But the charges are just some sign of the ordeal parents would have to face with the system; the manner in which admission slots would go to the highest bidders.

The Managers of the university system say this would not happen. But in a system in which “Sorting” has become the order of the day, I find it had to believe they would keep to this vow when they can’t respect a ministerial directive. Parents should also be prepared to spend more on equipping their wards for these screenings which shall come in torrents very soon.