It was heart warming to me to read very important information, particularly, the proposal to discontinue UME and replace it with UTME. But there are more questions to which this newspaper article cannot provide answers, particularly, to a curious and probing mind, like mine. To start with, the process of the UME will be very computer sensitive. What are the provisions that the organizers have made for candidates in rural areas with little or no access to computers to ensure that they will not miss the opportunity to register for the April 2010 UTME? The April 2010 is likely to be the maiden edition of the examination, what provisions have been made to make the maiden edition hitch-free, and should there be any hitch, what recovery strategies are in place? How far has the candidates been educated on those remedial procedures, if any? Has the organizers conducted trial surveys to ensure that students, teachers, and parents will work together to make the registration process effective? Will it not be wise for the organizers to provide support by setting up campuses or centers where students can go and register for the UME instead of relying on Cypbercafes? If there is a probability that Cybercafe will provide 10-15 of the registrations, family and friends, say another 10-15; the organizers should assume reponsibility for registering the remaining 70% candidates. Otherwise, the process will fail even before it will start.

I have other comments to offer though space may not permit. I have embarked on a one-man campaign that WAEC/GCE, JAMB and Post-JAMB be scraped and replaced with a summative assessment that will enable to student know his or her fate for admission to institution of higher learning before the end of SSS. Similarly, I have advocated that any student who must repair a bad grade should spend only three months to do so, and that those three months should be spent within and not outside the school system. Students should only repair the subject in which they have bad grades. I have advocated a community college system where students with bad grades could do a class 95, 96, 97, 98, or 99, to repair their bad grades simultaneously with some 101 classes in the which they had good grades.

Our educational system needs to be rescued. We have to do everything we can to remove all blockades from the pathway of our children receiving education. Education is difficult, schooling is tedious. Young people need stimuli not hindrances to education. I have advocated that members of the National Assembly forgo their December 2009 salaries and allowances so that the money can be used to improve the education systems, assist poor students, and their needy teachers.

It was Dr. W. Edward Deming who said "We live and work in a prison. Working hard within this prison produces nothing. We cannot remodel the prison. We must get out of it. To do this, a transformation is required."

Many of the placement examinations for admission to institution of higher learning that young Nigerians are subjected to are like working hard within the prison without producing nothing. Schools are closed half of the year for whatever reason, connected or unconnected with problems within the education system. SSS finals, GCEs, JAMB, Post-JAMB, UME, and soon to be UTME, are based on syllabuses that were never completed. Most of these examinations are not available to students while they are still actively at school. Most of the examinations are done as external candidates because any student that had left SSS before taken any placement examination is by definition an external candidate. After the student had struggled through thick and thin, the grades (or credits) did not guarantee admission. He or she must have god-fathers, who know other god-grandfathers. The student needs to produce a quota: The king's, the bishop's, the imam's, the minister's or money quota. The unlucky boy or girl is destinied to spend three years repairing a bad grade, repeating GCE, after which he or she will be subjected to JAMB, Post-JAMB, and UME. Of what use are all these obstacles that we put in the way of our young people to go to school? By doing all these things, do we endear the country to our children, teenagers, and adolescents?

I believe that by scrapping WAEC, GCE, JAMB, Post-JAMB, UME, and UTME, a tremendous amount of money and manpower will be released that will directly be used to place our young people in institutions of higher learning by directly working with the schools, the students, and their teachers.