Delsu VC seeks review of varsity admission guidelines

The Vice Chancellor, Delta State University (DELSU) Abraka, Professor Victor Peretemode has lamented varsity guidelines for admission, saying that greater emphasis is placed on qualifications of candidates prior to taking the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) .

Professor Victor Peretemode who spoke to Daily Times on Tuesday in Abraka community, however called for a review of the admission process, adding that such steps if taken, will improve the system where thousands of candidates’ admission into the university take the examination only to be turned back at the screening stage.

Peretemode, a specialist in higher education, said that many of the candidates’ deliberately filled wrong information into the data bank and when it was eventually detected by the time they submit themselves for screening many of them would be screened out for non possession of the minimum qualifications.

This, according to him, had informed the erroneous notion that only 15 percent of the over 1.5 million candidates that the UTME get admitted in a year, noting that there was wide gap between the number of people that wrote an examination and those that are actually qualified before the examination.

He said” let me narrate our experience two years ago in DELSU, we offered admission to 4,500 candidates, but when they came for screening, 800 of them were screened not qualified, meaning they did not even have English language and Mathematics, yet they applied for admission” and urged Nigerians to be concerned about those that are actually qualified, instead of the large number of people that write the examination annually, opining that” if Jamb had based its examination on the number of people who actually qualified before writing the UTME, the number will fall drastically and would be more realistic.

The vice Chancellor however attributed the institution’s current stable academic calendar to the state governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa’s favourable dispositions to the aspiration and welfare of the university’s workforce, citing the prompt payment of Salaries and timely response to issues impinging on staff welfare as the single most important factor that has sustained the institution’s stable calendar in the recent years, adding” even during the recessionary period of 2015 to 2016, when things were so hard, the state government paid salary regularly and in full”

He recalled that there were federal universities which paid between 75 and 80 percent of workers’ Salaries during that time, even as many state universities owed arrears due to financial incapacitation, adding” but here in Delta State, we have a governor that is labour friendly , very responsible and equally responsive to the aspiration of workers citizens” and commended members of the Academic Staff Union of universities ( Asuu) for their commitment and dedication to duty even as he said that their support and cooperation has enhanced the development of the university.