Jamb: 30 Years Late
Command School Alumni
I am filled with righteous anger as I write this morning. As I read the papers I saw that these JAMB people have announced new cut-off marks. What I have read is that to gain admission into any of our universities, all you need is just 120 marks and for polytechnics, it is 100 marks and one other one, I cannot remember what they call those schools, they said it is 110marks. You see these people, you see why I really get angry with this our country. They are reducing these marks 30 years after I had wasted three years trying to gain admission. You see, I tried to pass JAMB but kept missing the cut-off mark. At some point I resorted to trying prophets and drinking Holy Water before the exams. My first score was 120 and I had chosen University of Lagos and I applied for Law. Coming from Akwa Ibom, I did not bother to go check if my name came out. The second attempt, I hit 139, this time I had respected myself and reduced my ambition from Law to Political Science Education in the same University of Lagos in Akoka. I did not want to go too far from my beloved Shomolu. Finally, I decided to change strategy and approached the University of Ibadan with the same Political Science on my mind and this time I hit the jackpot with 142 and what was Unilag’s loss became the UI’s gain since they had as one of their students, the future Duke of Shomolu and now a distinguished Alumnus. But my anger today is directed at these JAMB people who never reduced the marks and allowed me to waste three years of my life writing UME in far-flung places like Makoko, Ajegunle and lastly Iyana Ipaja, waking up very early in the morning, going into my father’s room for a bout of heavy prayers which used to come with a heavy dose of olive oil anointed on my forehead expecting it to seep into my brain and open the dumb thing and then jumping into with my biro, HP pencil, eraser and JAMB slip to the centre. Today, these juggernauts have reduced the mark to a point which further confirms the joke that is our education system, officially propagating mediocrity and adding to the confusion that is tertiary education in Nigeria. So my people, let the games continue. I think very seriously that they should further reduce the thing to 50 for universities and 25 for Polytechnics and to help educationally disadvantaged places like the northeastern part of the country and Shomolu, even make it five. Hmmmmm and ASUU is on strike looking for salary under these kinds of circumstances. The government should just take a big broom and sweep the whole structures and its dead beat people into the lagoon. The Minister of education and the leadership of the parastatals should all be swept away in a massive purge, clearing the way for better positioned champions to take over and try to make sense out of the jungle we have found ourselves. Total ineptitude.