The Joint Action Coalition of Civil Society Organization has endorsed the on-going reform at the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) under its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, describing the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) as insensitive.

The coalition also described the reform of the admission system as the way to go especially now that all sectors are engaged in one form of upgrade or the other to comply with the digital era.

In a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja by the Coalition, on the threat to the quality of tertiary institutions undergraduates by ASUU, signed by its Executive Director/Convener, Sabo Odeh, and Board Chairman, Godwin Meliga, the group posited that “Our admission process must not be left behind in this regard simply to satisfy ASUU. We further pass a vote of confidence on the leadership of Professor Oloyede whilst calling on stakeholders to support and embrace ICT as the strategic tool to deal with corruption in the educational sector.

“This is as we warn ASUU to stay within its area of remit and not frustrate Nigerian youths. ASUU should rather be apologizing for its various acts that have crippled the Nigerian educational sector. We urge Nigerians to resist and reject the attempt by ASUU to extend its war against the educational sector. The people who damaged tertiary education, a key fabric of the societal march to advancement, are hard at work again.”

While giving a historical background to the decay in the education system, the group pointed out that “anyone that attended tertiary education in the 1990s and to some extent the early 2000s can attest to the pains of being an undergraduate in those years. This generation were permanent victims of what was referred to at that time as the ‘almighty ASUU strike’.

“Let us quickly note that even in those days, ASUU was crafty to the point of appearing to be doing Nigerians a favour. The bases on which it crippled the university education system at that time centred around improved funding for universities, improved welfare of its members, demand for payment of outstanding salaries, allowances and arrears, and in other instances to demand the reinstatement of errant or truant ASUU members who might have been laid off for breaching terms of employment.

“It must be further noted that this era began the decay in the education sector that the country is today grappling to remedy. Progress has been tedious in this regard and recent events have shown that ASUU apparently has something to gain from a damaged education system which is making the union to frustrate interventions that would re-establish Nigerian university as centres of excellence where youths can pass through and favourably compete with their contemporaries from any other top flight institutions in the world.

“Even at a time when Nigerians are making sacrifices to change the way we do things so that the country can make progress and put the ugly past of corruption behind us, it appears ASUU is singing a discordant tune to safeguard a tradition of corruption in institutions of higher learning. “Right from when the Minster of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu was appointed, ASUU did not hide its allergy to reform as it kicked against every decision announced as part of reform in the education sector like the replacement of Vice Chancellors on which it vehemently challenged the Minister.

Subsequent appointments into agencies in the education sector were cause of bitterness for ASUU and its leadership, which created the impression that some of its members and leaders would have preferred that they were the ones appointed. It also prompted suggestions that the unionists were bitter over the good fortunes of persons they had scores to settle with.

“We have become aware of recent ploy by ASUU to hijack the tertiary education sector by ruse. This latest trick is via the instrumentality of calling for the scrapping of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). ASUU, as it did in the 90s, is giving the impression that it is genuinely interested in the wellbeing of would be undergraduates.

“We took time to study the situation with a view to ascertaining if ASUU’s intervention in the way JAMB conducts its major or mock examination is altruistic as they make it appear. Sadly, all that can be surmised from ASUU’s interference in this process is that they have resumed their efforts to hijack the education sector for their own purposes.

Note that we say education sector because they have gone beyond their remit as higher institution teachers to dabble into academic levels that are outside their jurisdiction. If ASUU is allowed to dictate how JAMB does it work it is a matter of time before the lecturers set their sight on WAEC, Secondary and even primary schools.

“This misadventure could be excused by some people as being driven by good intentions. A note of warning must however be sounded to such people that they must go back in recent history to find out those behind the admission rackets and admission syndicates that were forced out of business when JAMB reformed its processes. The clamour by ASUU that each university should be allowed to handle its own admission processes is an open call to empower these admission syndicated operated by no other persons but ASUU members.

“Heeding ASUU’s ill-conceived call would send us back to the problems that JAMB was set up to solve. In the years that preceded JAMB, it was common to see some candidates secure admission into as many as five universities which implies that four slots would we wasted as the student can only resume in one school while several other candidates are made to wait for another year at home because these slots have been wasted.

“The embrace of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), coupled with other policy direction has helped JAMB make changes that increased the admission chances of applicants. It has for instance streamlined the options of schools that candidates have based on careful analysis of trends. This innovation is also responsible for the curtailing of the way ASUU members used to manipulate admissions while side-lining JAMB.

“It is therefore understandable why ASUU has issues with the reforms going on in JAMB and concluded the only option left to it is to call for the scrapping of the body. The duplicity in this thinking is easily exposed by the argument that JAMB is making things difficult for candidates and their families because of the applicable fees – the reality is however that paying a single fee for one entrance examination is cheaper than paying application fees to several universities and then paying for the logistics to write their tests at different locations on different dates.”

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