Nigerians Are ‘Over-educated’, Says JAMB Registrar

The Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, has criticized the emphasis Nigerians lay on university education at the expense of talent development and skills acquisition.

Speaking in an interactive session with senior journalists, editors and columnists in Lagos, the JAMB boss kicked against any attempt to further reduce the cost of University and Polytechnic matriculation examinations in the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari had few years ago approved JAMB’s recommendation for the reduction of the fees from N5000 to N3500.

When some of the participants at the interactive forum called the attention of Professor Oloyede to the fact that some parents are still too poor to be able to afford the N3500 fee, the JAMB Registrar responded that university education should not be a do or die affair.

Butresing his argument, he said for a country to develop, its entire youth population does not have to acquire university education.

“How many percentage of the UK youth population has acquired university education or fighting tooth and nail to get one? How many in the US? Are these not the best economies and most powerful countries in the world?

“If you check very well, you will discover that the larger percent of people in their best universities are mostly Nigerians,” the Professor of Arabic and Islamic Jurisprudence said.

Professor Oloyede argued that the current fee is okay as it is, adding that there is no where in the world where the form to seek university admission is as cheap as it is in Nigeria.