Senate endorses JAMB results' validity for 3 years

The Senate on Thursday at its plenary passed the Bill for an Act to raise the va­lidity period of the Joint Admis­sions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) results from one to three years.
Candidates seeking admis­sion into Nigeria’s tertiary schools through the Board will no long­er retake the exam yearly, should they fail to meet the cut off points of their preferred institutions.

The Chairman of the Sen­ate Committee on Tertiary Insti­tutions and Tertiary Education Trust (TETfund), Senator Jibrin Barau (Kano North), who ex­plained the recommendations of the panel, said the financial hard­ship experienced annually by par­ents and guardians in sponsor­ing the candidates for the JAMB examination necessitated the amendment of the enabling Act.
Barau said: “On Wednesday June 1, 2016, the Senate at its sit­ting, read the JAMB Amendment Bill 2016 the second time and re­ferred same to the Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TET­fund. The purpose of the bill is to amend the JAMB Act to increase the validity period of JAMB ex­amination from one academic year to three academic years.”
The motion, which eventually gave birth to the bill, was moved on the floor of the Senate in No­vember 2015. The Upper House then directed the JAMB leader­ship to begin the extension of the validity of its results to a period of three years.
The Senate had also ordered the Board to immediately stop its policy of re-assigning candidates to schools they never applied to and argued that such policy was contrary to the Act establishing the Board.
In the motion titled: “JAMB’s New Admission Policy” and sponsored by Senator Joshua Lidani from Gombe South, the Board was urged to consult wide­ly with Parent Teacher Associa­tions (PTAs), Academic Staff Un­ion of Universities (ASUU) and all other stakeholders in the edu­cation sector with a view to com­ing out with a friendlier holistic, comprehensive and sustainable admissions policy.
In adopting the report, mem­bers considered the contributions on the financial hardship experi­enced yearly by parents/guardi­ans in sponsoring the candidates for the examination.
Consequently, the Bill was passed as the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board Act (Amendment) Bill 2016.
In his remark, Senate Pres­ident Abubakar Bukola Sara­ki, said that the import of the amendment was to save parents and guardians from spending their scarce resources on buying JAMB forms for their wards eve­ry year.