Admission Seekers With Score Less Than 200 Shouldn’t Be Admitted —Former VC Says At 16th DELSU Convocation

By Daniel Dafe

A former Vice-Chancellor of Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State, Prof. Chinedum Nwajiuba, has said that “admissions into Nigerian universities were at inception competitive and based on the best applicants,” adding that “it was never the case that anyone with less than 60% in the entrance examinations got admitted.”

Nwajiuba said this on Friday while delivering the 16th convocation lecture of Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka, titled “Universities, Leadership and Contemporary Challenges: Are Nigerian Universities failing God and Man?”

Nwajiuba, a visiting scholar at the National Universities Commission (NUC), quizzed: “What are people with 140 doing in the university?”

According to him, “in the period around 1980, a score of 60% would rarely have a space in any programme at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka,” saying that “there must have been very few programmes where persons with less than 60% were admitted into.”

He said: “If we were to keep the minimum admissible scores into any programme at 200 (50%), a huge proportion of those applying will be discountenanced. To allow universities the leverage of going as low as 140 out of 400 (35%) in JAMB UTME, is to allow them to admit students with scores that the same universities would not accept in their internal examinations, given that 35% is a F (failure) in the internal examinations of Nigerian Universities. Similarly 35% was also a F9 in O’Level School Certificate Examinations, a prerequisite for admission into the same universities.”

Speaking further, he posited: “That JAMB allows universities to make choices that low and, worse still, that there are universities, offered such freedom of choice who go lower than 50% as score for admission, is a tragedy.”

Meanwhile, Nwajiuba called on Nigerian universities to retrace their path and regain the lost respect of the noble academic profession.

Dissecting the hard question of whether Nigerian universities are failing God and man, Nwajiuba admitted that there are increasing worries over the state of universities in the country, submitting that popular opinion suggests that Nigerian universities “are failing God, man and themselves”.

“Dear colleagues and friends, the vicissitudes of life and the pressure of everyday survival may have led many colleagues astray”, he told the large audience at the Faculty of Management Sciences Auditorium located at Site 3 of Abraka Campus, DELSU.

The Professor of Agricultural Economics opined: “We must seek to return to the path of moral rectitude and to regain our lost respect by the quality of work we do and the character we exhibit.

“We must not eat every food we come across, just because we are hungry.

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“We must seek a return of dignity, something as dignifying as the village headmaster of old”.

Nwajiuba posited that universities are supposed to be institutions in which the students and staff are proud of their accomplishments and ratings, regretting that current realities show that many students are “not sure about themselves, their universities and their self-confidence”.

On the way forward, Nwajiuba advocated that Nigerian universities should begin to exhibit a nurturing character that will truly qualify them as Alma mater, noting that a good mother does not destroy her children but corrects them in love.

“Even God tells us that a woman’s tenderness does not cease towards the child she bears. It is that serious. A university must never destroy her students.

“Destroying students includes granting results that are not earned, destruction of character, in effect claiming to have found a person worthy in character and learning when that is not the case”, explained the convocation lecturer.

He said Nigerian universities must strive to become “the island of sanity in the midst of the wide ocean of insanity”, and effectively play their roles of teaching/learning, research and community services.

“Too many of us are not imparting on the students; unfortunately, too many students are not interested in learning. What we have today are absentee lecturers and absentee students.

“In the past, the university was a universal place. There was the universe in the universities, but the universe seems to have departed from the universities”.

Furthermore, he commended DELSU for not joining some universities that do combined convocations.

His words: “The very idea of combined convocations commonly found in Nigeria, is anathema. It should not be.”

Also, Prof. Nwajiuba commended the Nigerian Universities Commission, NUC, for the role played in ensuring that universities are at their best.

Speaking further, he called for the revival of the presidential initiatives on 1st class that sent “the top 100 first class graduates in Nigeria to the top 100 universities in the world as a means to develop a critical mass of well-educated Nigerians in every field who could contribute to national development in all those fields, including academia.”

Professor Nwajiuba also condemned the recruiting of large numbers of non- academic staff, saying it was a Nigerian concept.

He noted that the business of teaching and learning resides with academic staff hence, according to him, if non- academic staff go on strike, the school can run successfully but if academic staff go on strike, the entire system shuts down.

Continuing, he warned that lecturers who do not take seriously going to lecture students in class should be sacked, just as he said that students that do not attend classes regularly should be sent home and not allowed to particpate in examinations.

Reacting to the convocation lecture, Vice Chancellor of the institution, Prof. Andy Egwunyenga, commended Nwajiuba for delivering a thought-provoking lecture, saying that the discourse calls for a reflection by Nigerian universities.

Egwunyenga said his administration has continuously prioritised excellence over all mundane considerations, noting that 75% of students’ admission in DELSU is based on merit.