DELSU: 2016/17 Pre-Degree Students Protest Over Admission List

Pre-Degree students of Delta State University, Abraka for the 2016/2017 academic session have ventilated their anger through a protest that occurred recently in the premises of the campus in Site 11, saying that the Management is out to deny them admission into the university’s regular programme.

Over 100 students were seen protesting, as some carried placards that read: ‘DELSU Management Listen to us’, ‘DELSU Give us Admission,’ etc.

According to one of the protesters who spoke to us on anonymity, the whole idea of the programme was to generate revenue for the university, adding that two admission lists have been released, but successful pre-degree students are yet to have their names on the list of those that have been given admission to DELSU.

She wondered why the Vice Chancellor did not address them, saying that they were told he was in Abuja, only to discover that he was around.

She said: “We were addressed by the DVC Administration, Prof. (Mrs.) Rose Aziza, who at first told us to be patient till next year, but our rejection of this made Prof. Aziza ask us to give them a period of one week to enable the university authority do something about this.

“It was a demonstration and not a protest. If nothing happens after a week, we would be forced to do whatsoever it takes to get them to act in our favour and our actions may not be this peaceful. We might have to get our parents involved too. Our final exams were written before Post UTME and we thus expected our admission list to come out before theirs. Surprisingly, we were told that only pre-degree students that scored up to the university’s JAMB score of 180 would be considered for admission. We were not told this during our orientation. The norm is just to buy JAMB form to get your registration number, but it was not mandatory to partake in the exam.

“If we were told about this arrangement, we would not have bothered about going through the pre-degree programme. It was just a waste of fund. We are treated as infidels. I have spent up to Two Hundred Thousand Naira (N200, 000), excluding the rent for my accommodation.  The school fees we paid is a little below Eighty Thousand Naira (N80, 000).”

While the University’s Admission Officer and the Pre-Degree Director refused making any official comments, we obtained information from authentic sources on the matter.

A DELSU staff who does not want his name in print disclosed to our reporter that the new JAMB policy of having the sole rights to determine who gets admitted into the university, even for Pre-Degree students was geared towards regularizing the issue of admission, saying that the situation where the admission letter bears a different department from the one studied by the Pre-Degree student that eventually gets admission will be a thing of the past. This he said happens when a student takes Pre-Degree form and gets screened out from a particular department into another and goes on to take same course of study in JAMB. For these reasons, JAMB has decided to solely be in charge of admitting all students seeking admission, even from Pre-Degree programmes and encourages students in Pre-degree to take the course of study they did in PD for JAMB.

Our source also revealed that it was when the management took their admission list to JAMB that they learnt of the change in policy.

This source wondered why the Admission Officer in the university has blamed those in charge of the programme for the confusion arising from the O’ Level subjects of the Pre-Degree students, since she is a member of the Board in charge of the programme and knows how it runs.

According to our source, Professor Enaohwo, a former Vice Chancellor of DELSU, Abraka then directed that unsuccessful students during the entrance exam that want a place in the Pre-Degree programme should not be sent home, but given another course of study.

Many that will not get admission now, we gathered, will be because of their O’ Level subjects which do not tally with their JAMB choice and those that did not score up to 180, DELSU’s JAMB cut-off mark.

Over 1000 students, we learnt, were recommended for admission by the DELSU Pre-Degree office. These ones, we gathered, scored up to 225 in their final exams and passed English, the core-course.

Many in time past got dual admission from JAMB and Pre-Degree, and JAMB, we were told, does not want any slot wasted, hence the streamlining.

NYSC now demands for JAMB admission letter when graduates go to NYSC camp.

The management at the time of this report, we learnt, is battling to persuade JAMB to shelve the idea till the next set of Pre-Degree students.

We were also reliably informed that in the next sale of Pre-Degree forms, all courses run in the university regular programmes will be included.

As it stands, the only benefit a PD student has over those taking up JAMB forms directly is that such will not seat for Post-UTME.

We also gathered that JAMB’s latest change in policy for DELSU might be connected with DELSU’s refusal to accept JAMB’s 120 cut-off mark for admission seekers.

At the time of filing this report, one of the aggrieved students said the VC, Professor Victor Peretomode was looking into the matter.