The Registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has come under scathing attack for scheduling last week’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) at 6:30 am amid rising insecurity in the country.
Leading the condemnation is Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party and former Anambra State Governor, has expressed concern over the schedule of the exam.
In a statement posted via his verified X account on Sunday, Obi accused JAMB of forcing the students to “attend a public examination by 6:30” at unfamiliar locations “in the face of insecurity” in the country.
Describing this as ‘reckless’, the former Governor of Anambra State said some of the students have been reported missing, others involved in accidents and “many more being subjected to unnecessary trauma.”
Obi wrote, “I came across multiple reports of students being asked to attend a public examination by 6:30 am. Teenagers, mostly around 15–17 years old, were forced to travel in the dark, even in the face of insecurity, across dangerous and unfamiliar locations because they wanted to get the basic right of education and sit for JAMB examinations.
“Setting exams for vulnerable teenagers as early as 6:00 am while transporting them across far-flung locations is reckless. Already, reports are emerging of students getting into accidents and losing their young lives, some going missing, and many more being subjected to unnecessary trauma. Who takes responsibility when a 15- or 16-year-old child disappears or is harmed while trying to access their right to education?”
According to Obi, the situation exposes a deeper systemic failure in Nigeria’s education system, where there are not enough universities and exam centers to cater to the country’s large youth population.
“This situation sadly exposes a deeper, systemic failure: Nigeria simply does not have enough universities and exam centres to cater to its youth.
“Today, Nigeria has just about 200 universities for a population of over 200 million people. That alone means one university for every one million citizens, a very disturbing and staggering ratio that shows the dilapidated level of the country’s access to education,” he said.
The former governor called on the government to aggressively expand the education system and ensure that young people have access to knowledge without risking their lives.
He stressed that education is not a luxury or expense, but the biggest contributor to development for any nation.
“You cannot claim to want development while starving our young the access to knowledge. You cannot claim to value your citizens while risking the lives of teenagers every examination season.
“We must aggressively and intentionally expand our education system. We must strive to match our population with access to education.
“Our young generation should not be endangered because they desire education. We must do better as a nation and ensure that our future leaders get the new Nigeria that they deserve,” Obi said.
However, JAMB had explained that the reason it had asked candidates to arrive at the examination centers around 6.30 am was to enable the commencement of preliminary verification, which includes processes that would take time before the examination proper.
