JAMB lifts ban on 8 state varsities

Reprieve came yesterday for the eight state universities, which were last year, delisted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in the wake of a lecturers’ strike that left institutions shut for about six months.


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The decision to lift the suspension of admission for the universities followed a meeting held between the board and relevant stakeholders of the affected universities, including their vice-chancellors, registrars, pro-chancellors as well as education commissioners of the proprietor-states. The minister of education was represented at the meeting.
The affected universities were those owned by the governments of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Lagos, Ogun and Rivers States.

Briefing journalists at the end of the meeting, which held at the boardroom of the National Universities Commission (NUC), chairman of JAMB governing board, Prof. Samson Ukpabi, said issues bordering on admission, infrastructure to enable the universities catch up as well as programme timetable up to 2011/2012 session were discussed at the parley.

He said the governors, who are visitors to the universities, had pledged to ensure they provided the necessary facilities to enable the institutions meet the targets. “Everything has been sorted out. It is expected that they will now go back on full steam; it is wonderful achievement,” Ukpabi said, expressing happiness that the matter had been resolved amicably.
JAMB registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, said the essence of the meeting was to see how the universities would cover ground on the academic calendar that had been lost, including meeting up with the current session as well as the oncoming one. “All of these have been thoroughly discussed, and each university has given us a schedule on how it will complete the 2009/2010 calendar, except one or two which will not be finishing until February. But as soon as they finish in Febraury, they will start the 2010/2011 academic calendar, and they will finish it in November 2011,” Ojerinde said.
Although Ojerinde noted that there was bound to be an overlap since the 2011/2012 session would start this June, he said the affected universities had made arrangement to cope. “In addition, the various proprietors, i.e. the ministries of education, had come along with their commissioners to tell us how they intend to fund the universities and help them to move forward and I must confess they have been very forthright and very sincere with us that they will do it,” he said.
On its part, he said, JAMB would immediately go back to its internet site and lift the ban on those universities so that they can register candidates for the 2011/2012 session admission.

Ojerinde said candidates who applied to those institutions would write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in June, 2011to be able to enter those institutions next session.
Also speaking, the Imo State commissioner for education, Prof. Jude Njoku, said yesterday’s agreement had brought to the crisis that had engulfed the universities in the past six months to an end. He said the crisis had drawn attention to the need to put in place a programme that would ensure that academic disruption would not happen again in the next one decade.


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