The house of representatives has
urged the federal ministry of education to slash the cost of Joint Admissions
and Matriculation Board (JAMB) application forms.
The form is currently being sold
at N7,500.
The call was sequel to a motion
introduced during plenary on Thursday by James Faleke, a lawmaker from Lagos.
Faleke said by remitting N7.8
billion to the federal government as proceeds from sales of Unified Tertiary
Examinations (UTME) application forms in 2017, JAMB has become a “revenue
generating agency”.
He said the N7.8 billion excludes
revenue from the sale of ‘change of course’ and ‘change of university’ forms
“at the rate of N5,000 each”.
The lawmaker said the high cost
of the forms “brings untold hardship” to Nigerians, saying JAMB was not set up
for “profit-making”, but to promote educational development in the country.
“The proliferation of
universities to 120, 83 Polytechnics, 82 Colleges of Education and other
tertiary institutions under JAMB purview is portraying it as a profit-making
venture,” Faleke said.
Hassan Saleh, a lawmaker from
Benue state, supported Faleke’s stance, saying he spends a “huge” sum of money
to buy JAMB forms for students in his constituency yearly.
Zakari Mohammed, a Kwara state
lawmaker, cautioned his colleagues on fixing a specific fee for JAMB to charge
without knowing the exact administrative cost for organising the examination.
He said to reduce the cost of
organising the computer-based test (CBT), JAMB should partner with a government
agency such as the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to take advantage
of the internet broadband instead of using private mobile operators.
Thereafter, the house urged the
federal ministry of education to review downwards the N7,500 fee for the forms.
The lawmakers also urged the
ministry to ensure that the cost of the other ancillary forms for changes “must
be free or at the very barest minimum of N500″.
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