The UTME mass failure

AS a teacher in the university, a near-10 per cent failure in the course that I teach would give me sleepless nights for days.

This is why I was shocked to read how JAMB happily touted the over 78,000 withheld results (equivalent to failure) over the national newsfeeds.

If you add the natural failures to this 78,000 non-result profile, the failure scope is uncomfortably broadened.

This much withheld results over “malpractice” could not have been the faults of the candidates because JAMB ought to have ensured that supervision was near-perfect.

It is also a shame that JAMB expects these young ones to re-register after the  payment of another series of registration fees.

One wonders where a country that takes money away from teenagers in the name of shoring up the national internally-generated revenue (IGR) base is headed.

Two years ago, the All Progressives Congress (APC) campaigned on the promise to float a “student-study loan scheme” and not to take money away from students. Reverse-gear politics is the norm now.

• Sunday Jonah

Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State.