UTME 2025: Peter Obi Blasts JAMB Amid Reports Candidates Allegedly Wrote Exam at 6:30 am
- Amid JAMB's UTME 2025, Peter Obi said Nigerian authorities cannot claim to value citizens "while risking the lives of teenagers every examination season"
- Obi urged the country's leaders to "aggressively and intentionally" expand Nigeria's education system and strive to match the nation's population with access to education
- The Labour Party chieftain stated that Nigeria's youths "should not be endangered because they desire education"
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Legit.ng journalist Ridwan Adeola Yusuf has over 9 years of experience covering basic and tertiary education in Nigeria and worldwide.
FCT, Abuja - Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, on Sunday, April 27, criticised the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Obi said the agency allegedly set the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) 2025 for teenagers as early as 6:00 am while "transporting them across far-flung locations". According to the presidential hopeful, this alleged act is "reckless".
Source: Twitter
The former Anambra state governor shared his thoughts in a post on his verified X (formerly Twitter) handle.
He 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, forced to travel in the dark, even in the face of insecurity, across dangerous and unfamiliar locations, because they want 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."
The LP chieftain said 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".
He asked rhetorically:
"Who takes responsibility when a 15- or 16-year-old child disappears or is harmed while trying to access their right to education?
"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."
Source: Facebook
Comparing Nigeria to Indonesia, Obi added:
"If we had even half of Indonesia’s educational infrastructure, which would be about 2,000 universities, the Nigerian child would not be forced into life-threatening journeys just to write an exam and still face challenges of university acceptance after performing well.
"Education is not a luxury or expense, It is the biggest contributor to development for any nation, and therefore most important investment any nation can do for development."
Legit.ng reports that JAMB commenced the conduct of the UTME 2025 nationwide on Thursday, April 24. The examination is expected to run through Monday, May 5, 2025.
According to JAMB, more than 2,030,627 candidates who successfully registered for the UTME would sit for the examination in over 784 computer-based testing (CBT) centres across all 36 Nigerian states and the federal capital territory (FCT).
JAMB is a Nigerian entrance examination board for tertiary-level institutions. The board conducts UTME for prospective undergraduates into Nigerian universities. The board is also charged with the responsibility to administer similar examinations for applicants to Nigerian public and private monotechnics, polytechnics, and colleges of education. All of these candidates must have obtained the West Africa Senior School Certificate (WASSCE) conducted yearly by the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, or its equivalent, National Examination Council (Nigeria), Senior School Certificate Examination, NECO SSCE.
JAMB dismisses claims of wrong examination centre posting
Earlier, Legit.ng reported that JAMB debunked rumours suggesting that it posted candidates to exam centres outside the towns they selected.
JAMB’s spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin, clarified that candidates are always assigned to centres within their chosen towns based on available CBT facilities.
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Source: Legit.ng
