Five days into the online registration for the 32,000 admission seekers into University of Abuja for the 2019/2020 academic session, more than 80% of them are frustrated by not accessing the site of the school for the registration.
The University had with less publicity to the general public particularly its admission seekers, opened its integrated registration admission portal for them on Monday September 9, 2019, to load scores obtained from the 2019 United Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and grades of passes recorded in their WAEC or NECO Examinations for clearance to sit for post UTME test slated between Tuesday and Saturday nexr week.
But 72 hours to the commencement of such tests, not up to 5,000 out of the 32, 000 admission seekers competing for the available 7,000 spaces in the University, has succeeded in doing the online registration and getting date and time for the post UTME tests already fixed to hold from Tuesday ( 17th September 2019 ) to Saturday ( 21st September , 2019).
The few who succeeded in accessing the portal so far, as confirmed by the University Authorities, did so by keeping awake at night between 2:00am to 4:00am to fill the online registration form while those trying to do same during the day time within the last five days, got frustrated by its failure to function during those hours.
Angered by the ugly development, many of the frustrated admission seekers and their parents are alleging foul play by the University Authorities to use malfunctioning of the server to shut them out of the entire process.
“This is unacceptable as many who had high scores in the 2019 UTME and high grades in their WAEC or NECO , may end up being shut out from the University’s newly introduced post UTME tests in favour of those with far lesser scores and grades,” lamented one of the parents of an admission seeker on Friday at a Café in Kubwa, Abuja.
However, in an exclusive interview with the Blueprint on Friday in his office, the newly appointed Vice Chancellor of the University , Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah dismissed the notion of foul play in the entire process.
According to him, “The server was not in anyway programmed by the University to malfunction or failed . The alleged failure of the server during the day time , must purely be caused by heavy traffic of users , rushing to access the integrated admission portal ahead of the dates fixed for the newly introduced post UTME tests.
“Information as regards difficulties being faced by many of the admission seekers in accessing the integrated admission portal during the day time , has gotten to us and urgent efforts are already being made to get the server upgraded for the required optimal functioning capacity for the exercise.
“All admission seekers will surely succeed in getting their required information loaded into the portal and assign dates and time for the Post UTME tests , reintroduced strictly to make the entire admission process more credible , competitive and qualitative for prospective students.
“University of Abuja being at the nation’s capital , has the entire 36 states of the federation and the federal capital territory as its catchment areas and as a result of this , evaluation process for the admission seekers , must be made tougher in getting the best brains across the States,” he said.
Before the reintroduction of the post UTME tests for fresh admission seekers into University of Abuja by Professor Abdul- Rasheed Na’Allah who took over from the immediate past Vice Chancellor of the University , Professor M .U Adikwu on Monday , July 1st , 2019, the University had been using aggregate scores of candidates from their UTME , WAEC or NECO to decide who to be admitted .
The aggregate model then, was purely online where each of the admission seekers into the University would just be required to download his or her UTME scores and grades of credit passes obtained in WAEC or NECO exam upon which aggregate percentage scores will be worked out by the University evaluators and sent to him or her online without visiting the University.
It was on that basis that the University pegged its aggregate percentage scores for any candidate who applied for Medicine and Surgery at 75% strictly on the template of merit , 70% for those who applied to read civil or Common Law etc, before looking at the direction of other admission seekers with lower percentage scores on the basis of states representation and other peculiar factors.
The percentage scores as hinted by Professor Na’Allah during the exclusive interview with Blueprint will now be computed from UTME scores , credit passes obtained from WAEC /NECO and scores obtained from the post UTME tests by each of the 35,000 admission seeking candidates.
” The whole idea is to widen the latitude of evaluating the academic prowess of the admission seekers with the sole purpose of picking the best among them across the various States of the federation “, he stressed .
