JAMB: Policy dissonance and pseudo federalism

The undeniable collective amnesia of Nigerians led to grope in darkness in seeking solution to the abysmal fall in the standard of education in the country.
The problem has its source from the unwarranted intrusion of the military in governance.  The sorry pass the country finds itself is due to what the Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo described as the “humongous damage done to the nation’s constitution by the military”. In similar vein, OluObafemi in the Saturday Sun July 9, 2016 contended that “in every civilised federation, there must be the federal principle of dividing powers so that federal and regional or state governments are within a sphere co-ordinate and independent of one another”.
Pseudo and false federalism by the aberrant military regimes has wrecked incalculable damage to the socio-economic development of Nigeria. One of the disastrous casualties is education, which has been subjected to policy dissonance and policy somersaults.
The series of educational policies and projects being churned out by the federal ministry of education clearly violated the principles of federal system of government. The clause in the Concurrent legislative list that says that when the policies of the federal government clashes with the state governments, the federal government’s policies will prevail must be deleted. The clause was a deliberate act in the military imposed 1999 Constitution being panel-beaten in the lopsided National Assembly where the Northerners intimidate the legislators in the Middle-belt to align with them in voting in the bills.

The principles of federalism were applied in the First Republic and the regional governments were in healthy competition. In the Eastern Region, government allowed the missionaries and entrepreneurs to run educational institutions subject to guidelines by the ministry of education. The society was the better for it.
It was the daring exploits of the Igbo in refining petroleum products and military arsenals during the Nigeria-Biafra war that made the military to direct the Sole Administrator of East-Central State, Ukpabi Asika to convert missionary and private schools to government schools without compensation.
The groundswell of discontent by all and sundry never bothered the military since it was a hidden agenda designed to slow down the educational advancement of the Igbo in particular and the south in general. As a follow up to the government take-over of schools, the federal government took over the universities established by the regional governments.
In the same agenda, the federal military government took away the constitutional right of institutions of higher learning to conduct entrance examinations based on the standard they wanted. JAMB was created in 1978 in the naïve reason that parents spent a lot of money to buy admission forms.
As if that was not enough, the military came up with “educationally backward states” and “educational advanced states” as if the later are responsible for the lethargy of the former. The scores of the candidates of the former were lowered thus denying brilliant candidates of the opportunity to gain admission. There was no freedom of speech since according to late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe; it was only a fool that would argue with somebody with a gun.
The serial pitfalls of JAMB led to all manner of innovations, which have never compensated for the monstrous aberration of centralising admissions into the institutions of higher learning. It was the same muddle that necessitated post-UTME but was aborted to satiate the agenda of the feudal caliphate. The Education Minister, Adamu Adamu brazenly abrogated post-UTME on the irrational reason that it was a burden to the candidates.
The resurgence of the agitation for Biafra and the Delta militancy had their source to the brazen bastardisation of true federalism.
States must be allowed to implement their preferred policies in the education and even other sectors of the economy. For instance, the educational aspirations of Zamfara State have proved to be not the same with Anambra State.
In its serial groping in the dark, JAMB has come up with the so-called “new grading system of merging the fraud-infested WASC and NECO results with UTME scores for the 2016/2017 session. Federal government-owned institutions can go on with JAMB but state-owned institutions must be allowed to conduct their entrance examinations. It is brazen flouting of the law for the federal government, which has no hand in funding the higher institutions belonging to the state governments and private entrepreneurs to allow JAMB to conduct entrance examination for them. Where in the world is this outright nonsense tolerated?

Mr. Polycarp Onwubiko wrote from Awka Anambra State